


Do I-jin Dream of Electric Books

by kurushi



Category: R.O.D: Read or Die & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon - Anime, Canon - Manga (Read or Die Manga), Canon - OAV/OVA, Drama, F/F, F/M, Gen, Reading, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-21 18:42:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurushi/pseuds/kurushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows from the end of R.O.D the TV. In the wake of the fall of Dokusensha and The British Library, there is another organisation seeking control over the information economy. What will come of the Google Books deal?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Books are very cultural, localised things. In Japan, they have smooth thin milk tea pages. Thin card covers, perfect binding, and glossy dustcovers over all that. Large stylised images. Some are hardcovers, usually also glossy. On the back are barcodes and prices. On the dust covers there will sometimes be short summaries, but you're more likely to find a photograph of the author and illustrator and a list of their most recent works and a lot of white space. Often there will be a wraparound in bright yellow or red, announcing in thick black calligraphy that there is now a TV series screening.

 

These books are made to fit into pockets on trains. They are made to be thumbed often. They are consumable goods that are sold for 100 yen secondhand in fluorescent lit chain stores. More bookish stores will wrap their covers in brown paper and it is never really clear whether this is to protect the dustcover from the journey home, or the people on the journey home from the dazzling colours of the dustcover.

 

In England they are larger, generally. Though some will have new hardcover releases, most come in smaller formats. Paperback, but with thicker paper than Japan's. Slightly less perfectly bound, with the shiny plastic protection slapped right onto the cheaper and thicker cardboard covers. All over, they glisten with large author's names and titles. On the back, are a few quotes and summaries. Inside the front page is a heirarchy of bibliographical information and title pages. Sometimes tables of contents. Either at the front or the back, there will be a list of other novels the author has written. Children's books will often have paragraph-long samples or summaries of plot. If it's been published recently, there will be polite notes about the sustainable forests and recycled pulp used to print the book (and on the cover a quote from Neil Gaiman or Diana Wynne Jones).

 

In Australia, various taxes are applied to sales, and nobody can afford new books. People argue about whether or not to relax parallel import laws, because books in the countries without VAT and GST are cheaper, completely bypassing the cause of the problem. When an Australian book is published, it tends to look like like a book that has been hastily imported from England, with a new flyleaf.

 

In America, people wonder why you are reading. Despite this, they are the country that consumes the largest amount of poorly edited pulp fiction. Books written in other countries, or that deal with complex words like philosophy, and alien objects like garbage, are censored to include simpler and more appropriate language. Some books when translated have chapters removed and re-organised to suit the “target market”, and sometimes these books end up with better continuity and are sold as revised editions back home. The books have special covers made for each target sub-market, for hardcover and paperback editions. NEIL GAIMAN! They cry out, in bright purple and pink and red. Oh, and by the way, this one's called American Gods. But don't let that get in the way of the Name, the publisher's logo, and the newspaper tag-line reviews on the back page. New York Times says this book is worth at least three platitudinous remarks! Best book I've read in the last three minutes!

 

There are flavours, that affect how we perceive books. In Japan, books are like water, and everyone consumes some. In England, they are enjoyed and then returned to the library. In Australia, they are hoarded jealously and scrounged from charity stores. In America, the concept of the book as a historical and beautiful artefact is emphasised and romanticised, in contrast to the flashier aspects of the publishing industry.

 

So it is understandable that when Dokusensha and then The British Library's L.L.L.U. Departments were shut down due to unforeseen megalomaniac conspiracies, it took a while for the rest of the globe to fill the void. Time was needed not only for the information to get out, but for the smaller powers in literary global politics to adapt to the new situation. Different concepts, different cultural needs, and most importantly of all, _different books_ affected them all.

 

Some of the early signs were noticeable; franchise bookstores in Australia demanding more money from small local publishers, controversies over distribution contracts and exploitation of authors with an online sales network in the UK... but these were all meaningless in comparison to the larger problem that began – as the way things in the US are wont – with a team of hired lawyers and an argument over intellectual property.


	2. Death in the Afternoon

Well, to be honest, the lawsuit began a couple of years before the fall of Dokusensha and the British Library. By the time that President Cole Harrison had limped home with his military and taken a long hot shower after the I-jin incident; by the time the stench of urine and failure had been scrubbed from his skin, he had made some very dastardly choices.

 

But this story isn't about him, so much. Not about how he called his staffers and began to reroute funding. Not about how he volunteered the US military to assist impoverished and powerless Britain clean up after that nasty mess in London with the Library and the Museum. Not about how he arranged for one of his corporate sponsors to buy out the failing stocks of Dokusensha. It is instead about an evening in an apartment in Tokyo.

 

A young girl with reddish hair starts chopping onions as the rice cooker bubbles humid and starchy. A tall woman is sitting quietly on a couch before a television set, her book sitting limply and forgotten in her hand. A usually cheerful blonde woman is agape, her fingers poised on a remote where they have only just then turned up the volume. A Japanese author stands between the kitchen and the television, her arms crossed with a very tightly clenched jaw.

 

“President Cole's support for Google in light of increasing international concerns regarding the proposed settlement with the American Author's Guild has been seen by the EU as a threat to not only their local copyright laws but to concerns regarding fair use rulings globally. A representative has been quoted as saying that any legal attempts to prevent Google's industrial scale scanning of copyrighted material will be potentially damaging to the very nature of 'fair use' as it applies to the general populace. Others argue that many books while still in copyright as out-of-print academic texts leave humanity's knowledge under the threat of natural disasters and book burning at gunpoint. Many are mentioning the incident in Jinbouchou in 2007 that has come to be known as the 451 Disaster. Emotions are high, and President Cole's own nominal involvement with the British Library Special Division's plans for a similar worldwide digitalisation of all books has led to -”

 

The television set was turned quietly off. Everyone in the room looked at each other. Sumiregawa Nenene adjusted her glasses; she could feel an uncomfortable headache coming on. Nobody had thought anything foul when Google had begun the project. It was all about storing and making rare books available for noble purposes like academic studies and worldwide enlightenment and literacy. But in the aftermath of the fall of the British Library, just when they had been coming back from international trips and enjoying their sudden freedom, Yomiko had pointed at a photograph in a newspaper.

 

“I know that man! Wait a minute, he's...” She had pinched her fingers on the bridge of her glasses and frowned. Nenene – who had been hungry enough for lunch as it was without these delays – had walked the few steps to the news-stand and had read the article while handing over some coins to the vendor.

 

“President Cole of America,” Nenene read, “has offered his blessings to Google as they begin drafting a settlement proposal with the Author's Guild. He claims that his administration will support any organisation that places our shared knowledge and culture in high esteem. In his eyes, Google is becoming a curator of knowledge. President Cole is most well known for his dedication of military assistance to recover survivors and equipment from the devastation that occurred in London in 2007.”

 

Yomiko had frowned. “Ah! The Joker told me about him! He was a coward, and a fool.”

 

Nenene had laughed at the time. “Why am I not surprised?”

 

What they hadn't mentioned while in public had been their uneasiness. The Google project sounded disturbingly similar to another well-meaning project they'd heard of before. Given that Yomiko thought Cole was likely to have a grudge against Britain, it made everything all the more suspicious. Feeling uneasy, they'd talked about it as a group. All of them. Even Drake had joined in through a web cam. There was something that just felt wrong about it.

 

But they liked to hope it was their own bad experiences that made them feel so, well, gitchy, about it all. The general public outcry against the whole thing had calmed them a little. After all, a company in Paris had started suing them in 2006, the websites all said. A few authors in China who knew their books were stored in American databases without permission had some personal lawsuits against the company as well. It had broadened the scope of media coverage, and now it looked like the project was now subject to international laws as well as a local American judge.

 

“Mii-nee, why the hell'd you do _that?!_ ” Anita King cried out. Her face was a little red, the way it got when something made her blood run hot. She had hated Google from the moment Nenene had brought that first paper home, and had spent months catching up on all the articles she could get her hands on. As a polyglot, that had turned out to be quite a few. Now the brat had newsfeeds set up on the older unused computer she'd commandeered from the corner of Nenene's room; the nightly news was more or less redundant. But she still seemed insistent on watching it.

 

Michelle Cheung simply looked at Maggie Mui, who was sitting tense and silent in her seat. Her face was frozen, and her eyes were watering.

 

“Shit, shit. Shut up, brat.” Nenene's voice was barely more than a whisper. Maggie was usually quiet and occasionally had her moments, but she'd been getting quieter. More withdrawn. Every now and then she completely froze. Nenene hadn't needed to tell Anita to shut it, but she'd said it more out of a personal panic and sense of dread. Nenene walked around the couch and sat down as gently as she could beside Maggie. She was never really sure how to handle moments like these. But Maggie seemed content to deal with the how. Slowly, the tall frame of the quiet woman bent down inwards and towards Nenene. Large strong hands touched down gently on her shoulders, and then suddenly clenched tight. Maggie's hair brushed against Nenene's ear as she lowered her head to rest on her neck. She could feel the hot dampness of tears as Maggie whispered into her skin in a tight and breaking voice.

 

“It's all so awful!” She shuddered a little as she clung to Nenene.

 

Michelle nodded in sympathy and put the remote on the coffee table. “It would be easier, if President Cole wasn't involved. After everything that happened last year...” She didn't finish her sentence. Maggie froze against Nenene for a moment, but relaxed as Anita began to chop vegetables with a vicious rhythmic violence.

 

As several long minutes passed in the room the homely comfort of dinnertime began to melt the tension in the air. Anita set the vegetables into the pot with water and curry stock cubes. She browned the meat in a pan, the sizzling rasp of food and the wooden spoon restoring their spirits. None of them could think of anything to say that could possibly make things better. Their last “mission” - if you could even call it that – had almost killed the youngest of their slapdash family. Those wounds were too raw for anyone to want to become involved. Not when everything might cool off in a few months. None of them knew how American law functioned; it was all a bit of a mess. But they hoped beyond hope that the Author's Guild would win. That that French company and those Chinese authors would win; that there would be at the very least be another few years of respite before they had to face another idiot of a man trying to translate books into fuel for his own power.

 

Nenene was more concerned about Maggie's change in mood herself. Though there wasn't anything specific that she could put her finger on, she'd been seeing more of Maggie recently just due to her free time – Nenene had submitted two final manuscript drafts a month ago and the only work she currently had to do was argue with her new agent – and something just felt off about the tall woman. Just small things. She seemed more hesitant. She seemed far less excited about new books, about reading Nenene's new manuscripts and about trips to Jinbouchou. She _really_ clamped right down around Yomiko, that at least was a certainty. Otherwise, there was just a slight difference in her behaviour that unnerved Nenene.

 

With the vigour that Anita had thrown herself into researching about the American scanning project, Nenene guessed that even the brat was feeling uncentred by Maggie's strange behaviour. If Nenene had thought that Google was the sum of Maggie's problems, she might have started being very angry at the company herself. But she guessed that that wasn't all there was to it. The Google project left a disgusting taste in her mouth, but a lot of it was memories of The Joker and Wendy's plan to resurrect Gentleman. She imagined much was the same for Maggie. Something unsettling but by no means cataclysmically bad. There was still hope that either the project would be stopped, or that it would be changed for the better by a settlement with the Author's Guild.

 

No, it was the odd reaction to their trips to Jinbouchou and other bookstores that was really worrying. Maggie was never as vocal as Michelle or Anita when around books, but she did become overwhelmed and giddy. The last time they'd gone out – Michelle, Maggie and Nenene – to have a look around and a coffee with Yomiko, Maggie had simply followed behind everyone. She lagged and mainly looked down at her own feet. Her problem wasn't related to e-books and their associated controversies; Maggie's problem transcended books entirely.

 

Given how important reading was in the lives of the Paper Sisters, the possibility that something was able to distract Maggie from a street full of booksellers sent a chill down Nenene's spine. She wrapped her arms around Maggie, and held her as Anita stirred their dinner and a browbeaten looking Michelle set the table. Maggie felt much less sturdy than she looked; her height had her limbs stretched into tight muscle and bone, and she felt knobbly and light even when she relaxed against Nenene. It made Nenene feel small and a little too heavy and real in comparison. Too round and clumsy and meaty. She wondered what she felt like to Maggie.

 

The human contact seemed to help her, whatever the real problem was. Maggie softened and relaxed and then sighed heavily against Nenene's shoulder. The rice cooker made a heavy clunk, and Anita began serving up food. By the time that all the plates were full of instant packet flavoured curry – what Nancy liked to call “lightly spiced beef stew” as she reminisced about her trip to India – Maggie had withdrawn from Nenene's arms with an embarrassed blush on her cheeks and a tentative smile.

 

Nenene knew that it wouldn't last very long, though. She had to find a final solution that involved far less moping and sadness. It was hard to focus over dinner as the Paper Sisters chatted amongst themselves. They were a little quieter than usual, a little wary of topics around Maggie. Nenene was sure that they were trying to be nice, but from the outside it was obvious that their concern made Maggie feel even more out of place.

 

“Oh, come off it, you're just upset that the Americans drink more milk than you do, _short stop.”_

 

Anita rose to the bait thoughtlessly. She stood up and waved her spoon at Nenene, shouting. “I'm only fourteen! I'm still growing! Not like you, you hag!”

 

Nenene just smiled and pulled her fingers at the sides of her mouth to create a terrible looking face. Anita stuck her tongue out, pouted, and then finished off her plate as quickly as she could. On her way to the kitchen with her dirty dishes, she tugged at a handful of Nenene's hair. “Slowpokes have to do the dishes.” She exclaimed before heading up the short stairs to her room.

 

“Ah, and on that note my dears, I just remembered. I have a date with dear Mister Barrie and my soft comfy bed.” Michelle smiled sweetly at them, and lifted her empty plate but didn't leave the table.

 

“Yeah, yeah. It's my turn anyway.” Nenene gave up. She had hoped to get out of the dishes, but worrying about Maggie had distracted her from making a timely escape. She pushed her plate towards Michelle, and waved for her to place her own on top of Nenene's.

 

“Thank you, Sensei. Second to the right, and then straight on!”

 

Maggie smiled at that. She picked up all the plates and cutlery left on the table without even making the offer verbally, and headed to the sink. Not one to argue about fine chances like that, Nenene followed her to the kitchen bench. She leant against it on the side opposite to the sink, so she could watch Maggie as they talked.

 

“You know, I'd never thought about it that way.” She began with a wry smile. She had the feeling that she'd figured out what had been wrong. Maggie looked up at her quickly before facing the soapy suds and scrubber.

 

“Thought about what, Sensei?”

 

Nenene shrugged as much as she could in her current position. “Well, when I was in high school I wrote trashy novels.”

 

Maggie opened her mouth to protest, so Nenene pinched it gently shut with two fingers. “They were trashy, and romance. That's actually how I met Yomiko, she came looking for me on the strength of my sentimental cliche-ridden crap. Nishizono says that I inspired her with my earlier novels, too. All that first love and first kiss bullshit. When I moved away from that and began working on more complex themes, I began writing for everyone. I've written sweet things and deep things and that collaboration with Hisami. But I don't think I've ever written something that is suited just to you.”

 

Maggie protested at that quite vocally. “But Sensei, I love your books! That I'm privileged enough to be one of your first pre-readers is more than enough!”

 

Nenene shook her head. “That's not what I mean. What I wanted to say was, er, well, that it's hard to write for one specific person. When I write these days, I'm more writing things that I like, and hoping they will suit you three _and_ Yomiko _and_ everyone else in my life. So none of my manuscripts are quite your favourite genre. I'm certainly no Hemingway, after all.”

 

Maggie nodded quietly, though she looked a little guilty with herself.

 

“Ah, hell, that wasn't clear at all, was it. I meant... I want to write a book that suits you as a reader, not you and Michelle with her magical fantasies and Anita and her lesbian soul mates.”

 

Maggie blushed quite strongly at that, and Nenene shrugged. “What? She's reading _Tipping the Velvet_. I reckon that we're past pretending that she liked _Anne of Green Gables_ for the boys, that's all.”

 

Maggie shook her head. “Not that, Sensei. You can't want to write a book just for me, it's too much, I...”

 

Nenene scoffed. “You'll have to put a lot of work into it with me. I won't be letting myself consult any of my usual proofreaders, so you're going to be my main muse _and_ pre-reader. You're going to earn this book.”

 

Maggie nodded thoughtfully. Nenene had become more accustomed to Maggie's small quirks and how to read her mood, but she imagined that Maggie would always remain at some level a mystery to her. That indecipherable half smile could have been a restrained joy, or just an attempt to please Nenene. Luckily the blush said more than enough. Maggie seemed to have finished washing the dishes, so Nenene brushed her hands on her trousers and made the choice for her.

 

“Leave them to dry. Let's get started.”

 

Instead of up to her bedroom and study, she led Maggie to her own cupboard under the stairs. With crossed arms, Nenene surveyed the piles of books that surrounded a blanket and a nest of pillows.

 

“Get started.”

 

Maggie blinked in confusion. “Sensei?”

 

Nenene frowned. “Well if I'm going to write a book that is engineered for your tastes, I'm going to have to immerse myself in what you like. I have time for a little background research, I've got months until my publication, and even longer after that until I'll have to write another one. So make a pile. We can take a snack upstairs and read them together, if you like. I want you close at hand in case I have to ask any questions.”

 

Maggie nodded dumbly and crouched down into her cupboard. She handed out slim books and hardcovers, Japanese and English and all sorts of languages. Nenene frowned at the pile. “Damnable polyglots! You're going to have to read half of these aloud to me, you know.”

 

Maggie handed out another book and apologised. “Sorry. Is that alright, if I translate as I read them?”

 

Nenene took the book and smiled though she knew that Maggie probably couldn't see it. “Of course it is. In a way it'd be better to hear it from you; the stories as you see them and love them. That, and I like your voice. The only thing in danger here would be your throat.”

 

“I see. Sensei?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I think that's all of them now, but... I can't get out of the cupboard.”

 

Nenene took in the piles she'd assembled around the entrance that were blocking Maggie in. “Aren't you a paper user?”

 

Maggie smiled awkwardly. “Mm. Yes. But, ah... I've always felt it's a little rude to ask them to work when they don't have to.”

 

Nenene sighed heavily. She pulled some of the piles backwards from the door and took one in her arms. Propping her chin on top of the pile she hugged the bottom few books close and tilted her body backwards slightly to carry them properly up the stairs. “You'd better catch me if I fall, then.” She teased.

 

A few months ago if she'd roused on Maggie like that, the tall woman would have abashedly apologised and rushed to fix whatever the problem had been. But as she had become more used to Nenene's manner she seemed increasingly happy to play along with the jokes. Or at the very least simply take them less seriously. Though as she reached the top of the stairs and used her elbow to jostle her door open, she could have almost sworn she'd heard a quiet whisper saying “I'll always be there to catch you.”

 

It hit something inside of Nenene that she knew she'd rather not think about right at that moment. She shrugged it off and spilled the books carefully onto her mattress. She turned to take the others from Maggie, who had managed with her longer arms and even longer experience living with piles of books to bring the rest. It was impressive, and Nenene turned to regard the books already on the bed as Maggie tidily deposited her armfuls on the floor. Nenene shut the door and looked over a few of them. She hadn't absorbed more than half a dozen of their titles before Maggie picked up a very heavy looking book with an English title. It had, as Nenene had suspected, Hemmingway's name on the cover. The title of the book was _Death in the afternoon_.

 

“We don't have to read all of this, but there was a part I bookmarked when I re-read it last month.” Maggie said quietly. Nenene could tell that she was nervous from the way she mumbled at her feet.

 

Nenene rolled her head on her neck, and cleared a space amongst the books on her bed for them both. She waved for Maggie to join her, then flopped backwards against her pillow.

 

“I'll have to think about it first. I want to translate this one perfectly, no mistakes.” Maggie warned.

 

Nenene laughed a little. “I'm sure you'll do it fine.”

 

Maggie nodded. “Alright, then. This is what it says.”

 

She put her finger on the page and traced it as she read from the English text in perfectly clear Japanese.

“ _If a writer of a prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.”_

 

Nenene nodded. It was something that she herself was always nervous about. But Hemingway was a few levels above her talents. She perhaps had one or two icebergs in her entire career. The light novels she'd written earlier _did_ have gaps, but it was mainly gaps of content and sophistication, not the icebergs of symbolism, content and meaning that Hemingway was referring to. Hollow writing.

 

“That reminded me of _Midnight Liberation Zone_. The scene in the staircase, with the afternoon sunlight and the clouds? When I read this, I remembered your book.”

 

Nenene was a little gobsmacked. _Liberation Zone_ had been complete tripe! She admittedly hated all of her novels once she'd finished them, but still. “Liar. No way did my book have anything that well done in it!”

 

Maggie scowled at Nenene – actually scowled. “You're just grumpy because you think you could have done better.”

 

Nenene sat there with her mouth open a little, agape. Maggie shut the book and shook her head. “I'm sorry. I just really did like that scene. I get upset when anyone criticises your work, and I just...”

 

Nenene didn't know how to describe the feelings that were filling her. Looking at Maggie's large size, she wondered if she was physically up to surviving all the emotions that writing a book for Maggie's tastes would need. Nenene swallowed down against the pressure inside herself and addressed the question that had risen in her mind. “You've spoken out like this before?”

 

Maggie blushed and kept her eyes on the book in her hands, refusing to meet Nenene's gaze. “Sometimes after your book is released... or when there's a review in the paper... people on the train. One man called you a hack, and I just couldn't stand it.”

 

Nenene snorted. She could just imagine Maggie, tall and imposing and insistent in polite unbending fury on a commuter train at some poor salaryman. It was a little flattering. Nenene knew every author ended up with a few fans, but to know that Maggie was that dedicated and passionate a fan was, well...

 

Well, indeed. Nenene couldn't stop herself from smiling a little. She waggled a finger at Maggie in joking chastisement and poked her with her big toe in the side. “Alright then, so you like the parts of my style that are almost like your favourite writer. I'm prepared! Read to me, woman.”

 

Maggie blushed at that but she obliged, setting _Death in the Afternoon_ aside and picking up a collection of short stories. “This is Hemingway again,” Maggie apologised, “I wanted to read some of it out in English, too, so that it has more effect. Some of the nuances won't translate very well. We can get you Japanese copies of the others another day.”

 

Nenene shrugged and nodded when it became clear that Maggie had been waiting for some sign of agreement. Maggie flicked through the book for a few seconds before settling on one of the stories. She stared very seriously at the page, absorbing all the prose. Nenene rested her head back against her pillow, closed her eyes, and let herself drift on the deep quiet burr that stuck in Maggie's voice as she read the first sentence aloud in English. Nenene could only recognise one or two of the words, but she could tell even before the ad-hoc Japanese translation clarified their meaning that Hemingway wrote words that _suited_ Maggie's character. Their short, deliberate frugality and structure were as thoughtless and subtle as Maggie's own attitude to the world. Icebergs that invited the reader to _think_ and _feel_ as well as read.


	3. The Tailor of Gloucester

Once they had started, it became far less about Nenene challenging herself to write a book just for Maggie. It really was just a good excuse for them to spend a lot of their time hidden in Nenene's room with some very good reading lists. Something about it seemed to recharge and reinforce Maggie; whatever had been getting her so down and lethargic had apparently been resolved. That evening, they weren't even reading one of Maggie's chosen books. A day spent lying in awkward positions with a thick collected edition of Charles Dickens had given Nenene a severe headache. Tense shoulders.

 

She was reading aloud from one of her own novels – _Staircase to the Angel_ – with a voice that at times faded away completely when Maggie reached a stubborn knot in her shoulder blades. Apart from the intense pain, it had been a nice day. Having a relaxing backrub after a long hot soak in the bathtub was just heaven. She would suffer through any shame at the errors in her own work for the sake of Maggie, an angel in and of herself, who had insisted that she _wanted_ to hear the book in Nenene's own voice.

 

Well, alright, some of the pauses were so that Nenene could fix the grammar or use a more appropriate word. Perhaps she should consider doing a proofread this way, with Maggie's attention providing a motivation for perfection. The warmth of the heated room and the motion of Maggie's hands made the cool winter weather outside seem like a distant fantasy. Nenene took a mellow breath in and was letting it out slowly when there was a knock at her bedroom door.

 

Maggie paused in her ministrations and glanced sharply at the door. Michelle and Anita had said they were going to be shopping for Christmas presents for most of the evening, and that they'd be eating out. It was far too early for them to have returned.

 

Nenene shifted away from Maggie and straightened her shirt, while Maggie hurriedly used her powers to slip a bookmark into the book Nenene was closing. Nenene handed it to her, and then walked to stand beside the door.

 

“Hello?” She asked, feeling somewhat stupid. She should have opened the damned thing first. Sheepishly she turned the handle and looked out and down. There was a pale head of smooth hair curtaining forwards around the face of a young boy. Junior. He was standing on the stairs to her bedroom and bowing apologetically. Nancy and Yomiko were nowhere in sight.

 

“So sorry, but I thought that someone else would be home.”

 

Nenene quirked an eyebrow. “Someone else _is_ home. Maggie, would you get some tea while I sort out what this is about?”

 

Maggie nodded. They all filed downstairs into the living room, Maggie offering a small secret smile to Junior before she left them alone to talk. Nenene crossed her legs on the floor near the kotatsu, and waited until Junior was seated to look him squarely in the eyes.

 

“So, kiddo, to what do we owe this visit? I thought you were going to spend the winter with Yomiko and Nancy in the hills.”

 

Junior frowned, and hung his head slightly. Nenene felt a little bit of a jerk; the kid was sensitive about his relationship with his mother. She should have guessed that his arrival indicated some potential trouble in paradise.

 

“I was. We were. But Nancy, she's gone. She told me not to tell Yomiko, and that she'd be sending you some postcards.”

 

Nenene frowned. “Sending  _me_ some postcards? What on earth?”

 

Junior nodded. “I didn't understand it either. But she said we'd all know soon enough, and that she didn't want me to tell Yomiko. If I'm right, then that might mean that she's decided to go back to work.”

 

Nenene thought back to the trips Nancy had taken, the days she'd spent investigating her past and making lists of old contacts she'd forgotten. “She certainly has done the networking for it, I'll give you that.”

 

Nenene smiled in thanks as Maggie brought the tea over. They all cradled the thin ceramic cups in their palms, appreciating the warmth. Junior regarded Nenene warily, as if she was about to say or do something terrible. She felt pretty bad about that, too. She hadn't mean to make the kid feel unwelcome. She just had never really been a people person.

 

“I guess we'll be having two more people over on Christmas day, then.” Nenene said with great finality.

 

Junior looked up from his tea at her, something strange glistening in his eyes. Damnit, Nenene was surrounded by unreadable I-jin. That's what they'd called them, right? The genetic clones produced by Dokusensha and the British Library. As if a clone was something less than a normal human, pah! Everyone, even clones, were built out of the same bloody meat and bones and brains.

 

She decided it meant that Junior felt overwhelmed with her generosity and kindness. Though Maggie seemed to have suddenly slipped back into her previous funk. She turned her cup around in circles on the kotatsu and frowned into it. “You mean Junior and Ms. Readman, Sensei?”

 

Nenene nodded. “Yep. We can make a real family of book-lovers out of it. Spend the day comparing favourites and recommending good ones to each other. Ah!” She remembered suddenly the importance of Christmas day, and that their planned party had possibly been intended as a private and intimate affair. “But it's your birthday party we're having. So we can have something like a Christmas breakfast with everyone, and then save the evening for family if you'd like.”

 

Maggie didn't answer for a few moments, and it was Junior's voice that interrupted the silence. “You have a birthday?”

 

Maggie nodded, a quiet “Mm.” her only response. Junior looked to Nenene, then down at his own tea with a very concerned face. Nenene decided to do her best to defuse the situation, feeling very out of place. She wasn't the person who usually cared about smoothing over social situations, let alone the person to do so.

 

“The sisters share it, they have a private family party each year.” She began, hoping that that wasn't exposing too much for Maggie's liking.

 

“That sounds... wonderful.” Junior said sadly.

 

Nenene decided to change direction quickly. “When is your birthday, Junior?”

 

Junior's face fell further. “I don't know. They didn't tell me, and I never looked at my file. I suppose that information was destroyed when we escaped.”

 

Nenene slumped a little further. She decided to say nothing further in case she triggered an even deeper trough of depression in either of her companions. It was her turn to stare down glumly at her tea, which was cooling rapidly.

 

Maggie's quiet voice seemed to even surprise Maggie when she broke the silence between them. “You can share ours, then.”

 

Junior looked up at her, eyes wide. “Really?”

 

The poor kid sounded as if he didn't even dare to hope. Nenene wondered what the hell Joker's plans had been, traumatising the kid so much.

 

Maggie nodded to Junior's question. “You're like us. So it's better that you have a birthday that means family than one that reminds you of your life before. So if you would like to, please share our birthday.”

 

Junior stuttered his response out, hands looking a little shaky on his cup. “I... I'd be honored, honored to.”

 

Nenene sighed in relief. She had no idea how she'd managed to stumble into and out of that. It had felt like they'd all hung over a precipice for a second there. Somehow it had resolved into a touching and intimate moment. She didn't know whether to trust herself or not, but Maggie's gentle kindness, the way she'd pressed down whatever dark feelings that had overcome her simply reminded Nenene of the woman's stoic strength. No matter how she felt inside, Maggie would always do the noble thing. The decent thing. It made Nenene feel petty and shameful inside some days.

 

“Well, it's a good thing we haven't gone shopping yet, then. I suppose you'll want to pick up your own gift for Anita at least, if not the whole gang.”

 

“Uh, mmm.” Junior seemed beyond much further conversation. Nenene wasn't sure whether she was supposed to touch the kid gently or leave him to sit it out. She'd never been able to understand boys.

 

Maggie seemed to know what to do, though. She headed straight for the telephone and mumbled into it for a few seconds. Then she came back with a book, and handed Junior the television remote.

 

“Michelle and Anita said they were just about to eat. They're going to get food and come home. You can watch what you want.”

 

Junior nodded dutifully, and regarded the remote. As Maggie settled into her reading and Nenene began to drift off into a daydream, he turned the set on and scanned through the channels. He settled on a news article that was discussing the outcome of the November election in America. Re-elected President Cole was shown making an address to some public or another, but his actual speech was inaudible past the Japanese over-dub of the story. It was mentioning America's  _Future of Knowledge_ , the platform on which Cole had apparently won the election. But that wasn't what caught Nenene's eye. 

 

It was the tall Asian man in a dark suit that was shaking hands with the President. Nenene recognised that face, that hand, that hair. The glasses, as well. She was staring at the spitting image of Donnie Nakajima. She'd seen his face when a man called Ridley Wan had posed as Donnie once. Later she had seen Yomiko's photographs of the true Donnie. She had said he had been The Paper before Yomiko. He had trained her. He had died years before Nenene had ever met Yomiko. But Ridley was also dead, now. So who the  _hell_ was that.

 

She didn't even have time to hope that nobody else had noticed her reaction to Donnie's face before Junior was pointing towards the screen with his hand.

 

“That woman, she's...” He was pointing at a woman with long blonde hair and a clipboard clasped to her chest. She was standing at President Cole's shoulder as she shook hands with the man that looked like Donnie. “... It's Nancy!”

 

Maggie looked up from her book and squinted at the screen. Nenene moved closer to get a better view of both the familiar faces. “It  _is_ !” She exclaimed. She sat back a little shakily. “How long has she been gone, then?”

 

Junior answered immediately. “A week and a half. I helped Yomiko clean the house and do some maintenance on the generator before we came back to Tokyo.”

 

So it could quite possibly be Nancy, then. Nancy and Yomiko had spent a weekend debriefing for the rest of them, so-to-speak, after everyone had calmed down a little from the events in London. They had talked in depth about the origins of the I-jin. Nancy Makuhari had been a clone partly of Mata Hari. Her going under an assumed name and wearing a wig didn't seem out of character at all. If Nancy hadn't been pointed out to Nenene, she would never have recognised her.

 

“I suppose she's recovering alright, then. Getting back into her career, and all. She picked a good cause to spy for, I can give her that.”

 

In the wake of her own words, Nenene felt like a complete tool. Junior smiled a little though, before his thoughts turned serious again. The kid was more of a stick in the mud than Anita was. Nenene could tell already that the two kids would be the ones running the household, even if Nenene owned the apartment.

 

“I don't think we should tell Ms. Readman.” Junior said. His eyes were glued to the small pixels that made up Nancy's face.

 

Nenene did her best to look as if she were watching the whole screen, or President Cole, rather than the man who he was shaking hands with. “Agreed. This stays quiet, at least until we hear from Nancy. You said she'd contact us, right?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Nenene was about to ask whether they'd had any good hints about when the first postcard would be, when the front door burst open. Michelle hurried across the room, leaving some bags near the door. She fell in a soft avalanche of coat and hair around Junior's shoulders, crying out his name and hugging him close.

 

“Junior! Maggie told me you'd come to stay with us! Christmas is going to be wonderful with you here!”

 

Nenene watched with great amusement as Junior blushed profusely in Michelle's embrace. Anita set a bag down on the table. It was full of simple convenience store bento in plastic bubble boxes, probably from the small place on the corner near the train station. A few onigiri, a cardboard box full of individual ice creams, and a bottle of grape juice seemed like an attempt at an all-out celebration. Maggie volunteered herself to set out chopsticks and cups while Nenene fumbled everything out of the bag and onto the wood of the table. She noticed slyly that Junior had managed in the chaos of the moment to turn off the television quietly.

 

As they all settled down into a quick bickering over who ended up with tuna, who with croquette or sausage, Nenene found Junior giving her a very small smile across the table. A little at a loss to how or why she had  earned it, Nenene smiled back and nodded down at the plastic boxes. As Michelle raised her voice sweetly to cajole Anita into conceding that the deep fried croquette was surely owed to the one who had opened her wallet to  _pay_ for the boxed meals, Nenene slid the nicest looking one – the tuna – towards Junior. The kid took the hint and accepted it with an incline of his head towards her.

 

Then Nenene took the croquette box for herself and faced the fury of two angry women denied their prize. “What?” Nenene mumbled around a mouthful of her croquette. “This solves your problem.” She swallowed her mouthful and spoke with a clearer voice.

 

“Anyway, I'm going to be giving up my peace and solitude now that Junior's here.”

 

Anita frowned at Nenene. “He's going to be sleeping in your room?”

 

“Not at all. I thought he could have the cupboard, and Maggie could share with me.”

 

“S-sensei?” Maggie sounded shocked at the concept.

 

Anita rose to her feet and loomed over Nenene. “Who said you could do that? Did you even check with Ma-nee?”

 

Michelle smiled happily. “Anita dear, if you don't like the thought of displacing Maggie, I'm sure Junior would fit onto our bed. He's not nearly as big as Maggie, after all. I'm sure we'd fit.”

 

That thought seemed to end the conversation. Anita glared at Michelle, while Junior had a trapped look on his face. Maggie resolved the situation by speaking up. “R-really? You're happy if I share with you?”

 

Nenene shrugged. “Yeah, the bed should be big enough, right? And if not, we can always pick up another spare futon. If you'd like to, I mean. Since we've been reading in there every day, I hoped you wouldn't mind.”

 

Now it was Maggie who seemed completely overcome. The blush on her cheeks made her look considerably more vulnerable and feminine than she did with her usual serious expression. Nenene couldn't stop herself from pinching one of Maggie's cheeks, and teasing her by saying “And the real excitement won't even start until the lights go out.”

 

Maggie turned bright red, and Nenene nudged her with her elbow. “What dirty thoughts are you thinking? I just meant that we'd turn the lamp on and keep reading.”

 

If anything, that made Maggie blush harder. Nenene felt the twinge of a little smile, but thoughts of more tidying (in Maggie's cupboard), more political intrigue (with whatever Nancy was doing) and getting pulled into something involving guns and corruption again (because if Donnie was involved, then Yomiko would be involved, and the problems would cascade from there) soured her mood. She took another mouthful of her dinner and hoped that they'd be allowed at least Christmas before everything started happening.

 

The next morning Nenene woke late to the sound of Anita shrieking. The noise was followed by a heavy thump in the vague area of the bathroom, and her voice breaking on the words “You idiot! Only my sisters and Hisami get to see those parts!”

 

Nenene rolled over in her bed, brushing her arm against Maggie's side. The tall woman had refused to get onto the mattress with her for some reason. Instead, she had made a nest of books and spare pillows on the floor beside the bed. It had put her closer to the desk – and the desklamp – and they had stayed up half the night. Reading and being read to. It reminded her drowsy mind of something, but she couldn't put her finger on it properly this early before coffee.

 

Maggie murmured in her sleep and rolled over, catching Nenene's hand in her grasp. The warmth and intimacy of it reminded Nenene of her teenage sleepovers with Yomiko. She'd never been able to tell if Yomiko reciprocated her feelings, or if the woman had just liked her as a friend. Once she'd learnt of Donnie, she'd known for certain that she didn't excite the same emotions in Yomiko that Donnie had. But then, nobody ever would.

 

Nenene groaned and rolled onto her back, her arm a tight prisoner in Maggie's embrace. It was too early to worry about protecting Yomiko from another fake Donnie. Way to early to be contemplating the content lack of hope she had once enjoyed. She'd been happy to be Yomiko's most favourite author. To hear the high-voiced excitement that came with every new manuscript draft handed over. But now she was locked in a room with a very different woman most of her days. One who rescued her, and made her coffee, and who drew parallels between Nenene's writing and that of the best authors in the world. Maggie would pause while reading Orwell and Dostoyevsky and even Murakami aloud. She would point out a phrase or a trick that reminded her of Nenene's style, Nenene's personality.

 

It was far too confusing. Nenene stared up at the ceiling and felt a headache coming on as the phone began to ring both downstairs and on her desk. She pulled her arm free of Maggie and answered the call blearily.

 

“Sumiregawa residence.”

 

A voice that was clear and sharp, her current test agent, cut through Nenene's brain like a razor. It ached in a line between her ears. “Sumiregawa-Sensei! I'm glad you're alright. Did you forget that we had a meeting half an hour ago?”

 

Nenene looked at the clock, squinting as she realised she'd forgotten to put her glasses on. “Ah, crap. Yeah. A relative came in from out of town unexpectedly, for Christmas. I'll head in right now, if you like.”

 

The woman on the other end of the line hmmmed for a few long seconds. “I have quite a few meetings today, Sumiregawa. I _do_ have to manage a lot of authors.”

 

The testiness in the woman's tone grated on Nenene's nerves. “Just how many authors do they have under one agent?”

 

The woman answered quickly and without any need for thinking. “Two hundred, though only fifty are having books published or promoted actively this season.”

 

Nenene swore under her breath. “No wonder they've got such a high turnover of your type there. Tell ya what, what was our meeting supposed to be about?”

 

The woman sighed heavily, and Nenene imagined she was nodding at the other end of the line. “Just some mail I had to hand to you. There's only a few, so I can have them forwarded or held until next time.”

 

“No, that's fine. I'll come in and get them; you can leave them at reception. And don't take any crap from anyone. They're probably just hazing you with this heavy workload.”

 

“Not really, actually. Our American publisher and distributor has been leaning on us to source English translators here; they wanted to push out a lot more foreign translations for the Google project. Something about translators having an equal say in copyright concerns? Anyway, I'll have them hold onto it for you. Thank you. I'll call you to organise your next meeting when we're closer to sending out advance reading copies.”

 

“Yeah, thanks.”

 

She hung up before they had time to get into any polite goodbyes. There was a heavy sick feeling in Nenene's stomach. She'd always thought that the scanning project was separate from her, distant. But now it was very close and personal. She was tempted to storm into her publisher's office. To start screaming as loudly as she could, railing against how sycophantic they were being, how any idiot could see that the whole thing was just making the company work harder to earn someone else – Google – advertising revenue and the cred for making all that information available to the world. As if the publishing companies themselves couldn't offer up free previews or searchable databases! As if there weren't already other projects out there, both for vital academic texts and out-of-copyright books!

 

But she'd learned sometime in the past few years how to hold her tongue when she knew bigger and more important things mattered. Though she really didn't like Nancy that much, and hadn't since the exact second they'd laid eyes on each other, she knew she could trust Nancy to do this properly. Nenene wasn't about to start screaming like a madwoman until she either had done enough research, or had heard more from Nancy about what the _hell_ was really going on.

 

So she gingerly stepped over Maggie's sleeping form and dressed for the day. Her brain was blank from sleepiness and antsy from the rush of indignation. She stomped downstairs, grabbed her coat with one hand and the scruff of Junior's shirt with the other. “Come on kiddo, you can help carry something for me.”

 

Anita stretched backwards from where she was sitting in the living room. Her hair was damp, and Nenene could easily guess what the shrieks had been about earlier. She hoped that she remembered later to think about a bathroom access schedule. Five people was just a little much for one bathroom every morning.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

Nenene forced as much of a grin as she could onto her face. “Publisher's office. You want to come and tell Nishizono what a fan of hers you are?”

 

Anita waved her hand flippantly. “I might read her books, but I still don't like her frills.”

 

Nenene smiled more genuinely at that. “You got me there, boyo. Bye.”

 

Junior followed her very calmly and politely out of the house. He stood behind her in the lift, and kept at least a foot behind her on the walk to the station. Unlike Maggie, who often hung back out of shyness, Nenene half got the feeling that Junior hung back out of fear. She imagined that being raised by the sycophantic obsessive doormat that Wendy had turned herself into over Joseph Carpenter would have had a large part in his current demeanor.

 

She held back from saying anything about it until she'd bought some bread rolls and bottles of iced coffee from the convenience store closer to the train station. She let the caffeine sink deep into her weary bones and make her feel more awake and functional while Junior looked down politely at his sandwich.

 

Nenene watched him in amusement. She capped her bottle and put it down beside her thigh on the bench. She clasped her hands in front of her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Junior mimic her movement after a few moments of hesitation.

 

“Itadakimasu.” She said.

 

After a few seconds and with the barely audible softness of a breath in, he echoed her. “Itadakimasu.”

 

Nenene watched him as best she could without betraying herself. Junior seemed not to notice; he had returned his hands to his side, and was looking down at the plastic wrap that separated the air from the roll. She'd got him a fried noodle roll; they seemed to be popular with Anita, if not all kids his age.

 

Tentatively, Nenene began to peel back the wrapper of her own bread roll. A simple, cheap and plastic tasting ham and cheese. She heard Junior open his own. Perversely now she waited, to see whether or not he would begin eating before her. He didn't. Just stared right down at his food as the late morning crowd moved around them on the platform.

 

“You know, kid, I'm not your commanding officer or anything. This is family, alright? If you're going to share the birthday, that makes you one of the family. So drop the polite act if you can. I'm not about to fire you, and it's bad manners to behave yourself around family members.”

 

He gave her a quizzical look. Nenene shrugged. She'd put the information out there, and she was too damn hungry to wait any longer. She choked down the food in as few bites as possible, wishing that there had been some onigiri left in the shop's fridge. Still, the food filled her up and made her feel somewhat more ready to face the day.

 

Junior seemed to have noticed that she'd finished, and rushed himself to the end of his own food. A little bemused at this follow-the-leader game, Nenene led the way to the rubbish bin and they took their turns at throwing away their food wrappers. Then they moved to stand in silent contemplation as they waited for the next train on their line to arrive.

 

After about ten seconds Nenene couldn't stand it anymore. She turned to Junior and stared down at the light and impossibly tidy hair on his head. “You know, you're in a safe place now. Whether it's with Nancy, or Yomiko, or us... you can relax a little. It's been almost a year already. I know that things won't be magically better, but you should learn to be a little less scared of your own shadow...”

 

Fuck, it was turning into a monologue and a half. Nenene was grateful as the arrival of their train interrupted her speech. She didn't want to embarrass herself in a train full of housewives, some who even lived in her apartment block, so she stood beside Junior near a door and watched the skyline rise and fall beyond the tracks.

 

When they got off at the other end, it was a few relatively quiet blocks walk to the publisher's building. Nowhere near as crushing and busy as the central areas. She took a deep breath in and tried for the third time or so to set the boy at ease. “I mean, I don't mean to pressure you or anything. But you can let it all hang out, so to speak. Be the one to eat first, or decide to go out and spend the afternoon with friends. Making friends, you know...”

 

Junior stopped beside her and looked up to meet her eyes. Nenene blinked.

 

“Miss Sumiregawa, I...”

 

“Nene-ne. What have I told you?”

 

“Miss Nenene, then. I know. It's just... hard to adjust. I feel very awkward. But thank you for your concern. Your support means a lot to me.”

 

He moved forwards, and Nenene let herself trail behind him for a few steps, for a change. She felt a little gobsmacked. She'd beentold off by him. Well, not _told off_ exactly, but certainly told what was what. Kindly reprimanded. Maybe part of that was just the kid's style. Fuck, he had Nancy's genes and Wendy's frigid bitch persona to start life off with. He was bound to turn out weird.

 

The doors slid open automatically, and once they had ridden the lift to the correct floor, the receptionist handed over the letters. There were hardly any really, just ten or so held together with a rubber band. She didn't usually clamour for her fan mail, so it seemed odd that she'd be called in for anything less than a carrier bag's full. Still, maybe the new editor was so frazzled that it had made sense when she'd scheduled the appointment.

 

“Sorry, nothing to carry after all. Though you can have a look at these if you like.” Nenene handed the letters to Junior and with a throwaway glance to the busy corridors, she decided against seeing if anyone else she knew was around. Instead she smiled at the girl behind the desk, who she had seen a few times before, but had never really remembered the name of. She was newish, had only been around for a few years.

 

“So we're organising all the English translations? It seems a little weird, since the US publisher has always handled it. I heard good things about my manuscripts, even if I couldn't read a lot of them myself.”

 

The girl sighed heavily. “Yes. Well, it's quite awful for us. But since they handle a lot of translated works, from a lot of publishers over here, apparently their pool of talent is being exhausted. They say that everyone over there wants to be able to have catalogues full of exciting releases. They don't want output to slow _at all_. They said they wanted to be _cutting edge_.”

 

Nenene hmmed thoughtfully. “You mean that they all want to have their books accessible through the Google books thing? That they're worried their catalogues won't look fat enough compared to others?”

 

The receptionist smiled a little, and shook her head. “Not at all. They're worried that libraries and larger scale buyers will be holding back at the BookExpo America in 2009. That because of the options Google Books will offer, they're going to have to have newer and exclusive content. Google's only scanning library books, after all. So they seem to think that whoever has the most volume of books will secure the best deals for the rest of the year.”

 

Nenene took a moment to process all that. When it had sunk in, she protested “But that makes hardly any sense at all! Wouldn't saturating the market just make everything seem worth less?”

 

The receptionist shrugged. “They're Americans. I have no idea what they think. But the royalty contracts there are part of our biggest income – it's such a large customer base – and most of your food money is probably from them. I don't question them at all. But I do wish that they'd slow down enough that I could take a lunch break.”

 

The girl looked frazzled. She turned back to her computer monitor as soon as she'd finished talking. Nenene felt a little guilty that she'd had the luxury of a late morning – even if she hadn't slept hardly enough. That she'd wasted some of the girl's time chatting about something that she probably could have researched on a bulletin board online didn't help her conscience. Nenene took the letters from Junior without warning and sat down to look through them in one of the chairs usually reserved for newbie authors and guests.

 

“Go get the poor woman something to eat, will you? Money's in my pocket.” Nenene winked, and saw an almost smile creep onto Junior's face as he reached through her coat and her wallet, and showed her a handful of notes and coins. He nodded once, silently, and then left her to her letters.

 

Well, it seemed that her altruism would be good for him as well as the harried girl at the desk. As a phone began bleating somewhere down the hall of offices, Nenene began to shuffle through the letters. The soft flowery pink stationary of some reminded Nenene that a lot of her fanbase were women. Probably readers of the mass output of her teenage trashy romance years. But a few seemed to be more subdued and plain; she hoped that they were more serious readers who had truly connected with her work. It was, she thought, as she made a face at a _hello kitty_ sticker, more fun guessing what the content of the letters were than actually reading them.

 

Then she found the postcard. It had a clear and very patriotically American photograph of a statue of some man. There was a few flags, and an English phrase, “Greetings from Washington” in bold empahsised capital letters along the bottom. She turned it over to find incredibly neat Japanese handwriting, in a fine point pen. It was small and hard to read as it spread across nearly the entire white space of the back of the card. Her official mailing address barely fit onto it. The characters looked almost unreal, they were so thin and tiny and meticulous. A voice inside her head, Michelle's – from when she'd spent a week enamoured of all things Beatrix Potter – observed that there was _no more twist_. Like the handiwork of mice, it was.

 

 _Dear Miss Sumiregawa,_

 

 _I really like your books. Sadly I have to wait until they have been translated into English before I can read them. I have had a Japanese friend help me translate this letter, just for you! I am excited that your new book will be coming out in America very soon. My boss is quite a Gentlemen, and I am sure that if I show him your work he will appreciate it as much as your dear editor Mr. Linho did once. I really loved the part in_ You Know Me _where the characters all have to keep that very big secret from the heroine. Please give my regards to her, and to the young boy from_ Midnight Liberation Zone,  _the one with the foster parents. They are my absolute favourite of your characters ever. I love them a lot!_

 

 _Thank you so much for writing,_

 

 _Ainsley Hayes_

 

Nenene had to sit back and blink her eyes clear a few times. The writing was so dense that it was quite difficult to read. By the time she'd finished, Junior had returned and offered a plastic bag hopefully full of edible food to the receptionist. She smiled thankfully at him.

 

“Yakisoba! Fried noodle rolls! These were my favourite in high school. Thank you so much!”

 

Nenene eyed Junior. He blushed a little. He had apparently enjoyed his food after all. With a short nod he turned and walked to stand beside Nenene. She waved to the receptionist and then led the way into the elevator.

 

When she leant back against the wall and crossed her arms, Junior reached forwards to press the button. She waited until he had turned to look at her before she spoke. “You read the postcard?”

 

He nodded, looking either guilty or embarrassed.

 

“She meant you, you know. That's a good thing. She _loves_ you.”

 

Junior seemed to grit his teeth a little at that. They stood in silence as the elevator reached the bottom floor. They walked out onto the street before Junior raised his voice to answer. “Yes. But it's... hard. Even with Wendy, I hoped that I had biological parents alive somewhere. Though I knew all about the I-jin projects, and that I was probably vat-grown like the rest, I just... hoped. And then, when I finally met her...”

 

He trailed off. Nenene tried to imagine – and couldn't really – how those days would have felt for him.

 

“So it's hard. It's confusing. She has this connection to me, because I'm her child and a symbol of all they took away from her. And because Ms. Readman cared about it. But I have... nothing of the sort. So it's hard to adjust to her. Especially when we're around Ms. Readman, I...”

 

Nenene patted him on the head in a way that she knew annoyed and distracted Anita. “All right, then. So we don't invite her to the birthday party, and in exchange when Nancy gets back, you _tell_ her this. If she knew, she'd do better, I'm sure of it.”

 

Nenene didn't actually know for certain. But she really couldn't care less about Nancy. Junior, however... Maggie and Michelle and Anita all seemed to like something about the kid. Hell, Nenene liked the kid. She wasn't sure how much of him she saw was really him, or his training, or his trauma, but she liked him nonetheless.

 


	4. We Can Build You

Yomiko Readman had a secret. She'd almost hoped that somebody had asked her what it was. They all knew that she'd seen what the British Library had done to Donnie, that Anita had been there to witness her rage. That it had involved Nancy and Junior and everyone, really. But they didn't seem to know how, and they never thought to ask.

 

She wondered, some days, if they already knew. It was a pretty simple and lame joke, after all. Joseph Carpenter, Jo-Car, the Joker, he had loved puns. He'd always had a rotten and twisted sense of humour. The thought of sweet little Wendy, giggling at them in awe of the man, letting his agenda warp her sense of rightness and dignity...

 

Ah, Yomiko had too many memories inside her. She rolled over, kicked her legs against the mattress of her bed, just kicking until her calves throbbed and stung from it. She was trying to read, but her mind kept on returning to Donnie. She couldn't focus on the words on the page, there were too many already swimming around in her head.

 

It made a sort of sense, in a way. They'd had the final confrontation. They'd been traumatised and then they'd had that down-time to reconnect. Only now that Nancy had left – and without any warning – Yomiko had found herself abruptly alone with her own thoughts for the first time in years. It was like she'd had a self-protective mechanism in place to hold back the true horror of it all, because if she allowed herself to even  _think_ that sort of thing around Nancy, well then...

 

So, the joke. She'd been thinking about the joke behind it all. The name, the I-jin. The nickname they used for the genetic origins of the various clones. In Japanese if you were Nihon-jin, Japan-jin, you were born to Japanese parents (for the most part). The same with America-jin, India-jin. The word for person and the word for nationality or ancestry. Yomiko was one half England-jin, which was why she'd been allowed to travel there to the British Library so easily during her youth.

 

I-jin was a terrible pun based on ancestry and nationality and inheritance. Also, maybe, one based on the recent popularity of Apple's gadgets, given the secrecy and designer nature of the clones that had been produced. I-jin 3.0, running OS-X wasn't too far from the truth. But more than anything else it was a cruel joke at Yomiko's – and Donnie's and eventually Ridley's – expense that she should have recognised much sooner than she had.

 

Donnie-jin. I-jin, for short. In Japanese, spelt out phonetically, you could see the resemblance. No way was it a joke. DonnI-jin, the British Library's big damned secret weaponry, and Joseph Carpenter snickering into a teacup as Wendy blinked in confusion. Yomiko was never sure now, whether thinking about it made her want to choke to death, or cry, or just let go and lash out again in a burst of emotion, paper whirling around as her mind turned blissfully blank. It came on like hysteria, in sobbing gasps. She couldn't ever remember if she started laughing or crying first, but it always turned out to be fists clutched in her hair, fingernails digging in and legs curling up into her body, as if she could shrink herself down into someone much smaller. Someone who wouldn't be capable of feeling all this.

 

Because the first Nancy had the cocky grin that Donnie used to have, when he was showing off a flashy special move in training, or sharing a secret laugh with Ridley while Yomiko practised her lessons. Michelle had that exuberance, found that joy in others that Donnie had always shared with his friends. Maggie had his silence, strength, shyness, and his blush – she had his  _blush_ ! Anita, despite their colour, she had his eyes. The same eyes that looked at Yomiko, straight into her, the day she thought she had killed him. First hateful and cold, then melting into desperate aching hope and forgiveness and love. It was unfair that Anita watched her through those eyes.

 

She saw him in Junior, even. A boy who was the offspring from two I-jin, second generation, who would maybe display even more of Donnie's genetics and traits as he aged. He seemed to carry all of Donnie's childhood trauma and depression. He'd probably been trained the same way, which only made things worse. When Donnie had episodes like that, all distant and closed-off and stiff, Yomiko hadn't had any idea what had been going on. Not until years later when Ridley revealed the true extent of the British Library's abuse, and the terrible things that had been done to all those children, Donnie and Ridley included. When Junior was emptied and shut-down psychologically from the horror of what Wendy and Joker and by inaction Yomiko herself had done to him, she couldn't even see Junior. She saw a boy that might have been Donnie, slumped in some imagined prison, knuckles scraped raw and numb with terror.

 

She hoped none of them knew. Partly because it hurt her own heart, and if she had to live with that and Donnie's sweet understanding pity and love in all their eyes, she'd go mad. For certain, she'd go utterly mad. Partly because it was such a  _stupid_ joke, and a cruel one to be allowed to persist in either Japanese or English words, and partly because as long as they assumed that the label I-jin was irrelevant in their current lives, they might have the chance at a happy free life.

 

Small parts of Donnie, living on in his genetic descendants, reading and living and loving and communing with paper. It would have been beautiful, if it wasn't for the image in Yomiko's memory of his face half cut away, his brain and organs and skin being slowly regrown and harvested over and over again. The tanks.

 

Joker had told her that they had needed to keep him both conscious and alive. They needed his brain functioning, like Gentlemen's, so that they could copy the important parts of his mind across accurately. She had seen the video footage of electric probes and magnets being used on the cloned meat-shells, forcing the I-jin brains to mimic and learn the emotions that triggered supernatural abilities, and...

 

And sometimes Yomiko wondered if she herself was one of them. Not cloned from Donnie, of course, but from a previous paper user. She was number nineteen. There had been more than enough before, to run experiments on. She'd had parents, but they had sent her quite willingly over to train at the British Library, and they hadn't been home or in contact for years, and...

 

Ahh! She was supposed to be reading, not thinking like this! But she supposed that the thoughts all had to come trickling out eventually. She couldn't stop her own brain from working through what it needed to, to keep functioning sanely. It would be unhealthy to repress it all.

 

But it hurt too much. No. She didn't care enough about mental health or long-term benefits, it hurt  _too much_ . Yomiko reached for one of the other books around her bed, knowing exactly which one she wanted now. It was one of Nenene's earliest, and she read the thing whenever she was depressed for one reason alone: there was a side character who watched over the female lead, caring and distant. A professor-type, gentle and intelligent and well-read. In those short moments he was in the story, though hardly anything about him was described, she could almost  _feel_ Donnie sitting beside her.

 

For the next few hours she was held together by prose alone. Feeling her heart slowly fade and relax until it was no longer stuck in her throat. She began to feel a little silly and sheepish about the scabs she'd probably end up with on her scalp, and a little regretful about her depression. Donnie had probably died years ago, now. Even before they destroyed the British Library and all it stood for. He would have become discarded pieces of biology, leftover meat that didn't hold the real  _him_ any more. What she had now with her friends? It was something more than she'd ever been able to hope for, when she'd met his eyes and stabbed right through his heart.

 

Now she had the chance to make Nancy and Junior and Anita and maybe even the other Paper Sisters happy. It mightn't count in law or any technical sense, but these people were as good as Donnie's children. His legacy to the world. They'd already undone a lot of the evil that Donnie and Yomiko had wrought on behalf of the Library. They'd undone the Library itself, even!

 

With the Google books deal in the news and shining in their eyes, Yomiko could see that they'd probably get involved again. If they were, she'd be there right alongside them. If Donnie got to sacrifice himself for her sake, all those years ago, then she'd be damned if she didn't take all opportunities she had to protect what was left of him.

 

All romanticism aside, she was still a coward who wanted to die. She had to be honest with herself. She just wanted, on a deeper level, to escape this all and read. And read. And read. And never have to face the world again. She reached blindly for the next best book as she felt the tears rise like a tide to the back of her eyes. Her current one wasn't being an effective distraction at all.

 

But then the door was opening, letting light into the room, and Anita was pushing in. She'd brought another pile of papers along with her. Boring legal documents and news articles. Angry on behalf of Nenene, Hisami and all authors everywhere, the kid had joined this international network of information. Taking copyright laws and the settlement and trying to empower authors globally to respond to the US legal system's handling of the Google Books settlement.

 

They had longer now that the judge had insisted on revising the information, as if he felt bad that the Author's Guild had effectively sold out. Yomiko had agreed helplessly to be a translator and help – she could only do English to Japanese, but that was still good enough. She passed her completed Japanese documents on to a shopkeeper in Jinbochou, who in turn copied them out in Korean.

 

“Got some more work for you today.”

 

Anita dropped the pile down on the mattress beside Yomiko, and began inspecting the most recent piles of books nearer to the door. After a few half-hearted arguments, Yomiko had agreed to let her borrow a few every now and then. But Anita didn't pick up anything, just scrutinised the titles and fidgeted with the dustcovers.

 

“Bah, it's like this!” She burst out with suddenly. Yomiko's attention had drifted back to her book, and it came as a bit of a shock.

 

“Pardon, sorry?”

 

“It's that brat, Junior. He's not bad, as such, but he's just... a _boy_. In my _house_.”

 

It was an odd juxtaposition to Yomiko's own train of thought, to say the least. She blinked, remembering that sharing a house wasn't always the best of situations. “I see,” Yomiko spoke cautiously, not wanting to touch upon any sensitive points. “I can't say I've had to live with any boys myself, before. I don't think that fathers count. Do they count?”

 

Anita gave Yomiko a baffled glance, as if she'd said something entirely absurd. The girl made a scoffing noise and turned away, continuing to talk as she browsed one of the more stably stacked shelves in the room.

 

“How should I know? Closest I've ever come to a father is Gentleman! Anyway, he does gross things. Like, he pairs his dirty socks, which is weird. And stinks. And he stares at Michelle's tits, like he's never seen a woman before. What the hell is wrong with him? Get your eyes off my sister, you jerk! Just because you're one of us, doesn't mean you're family!”

 

Yomiko took a moment to process the jumble of sounds that had come out of Anita. “So it's okay for family to ogle each other? Wait, no, sorry.” Yomiko held her hand up to stop Anita, whose mouth was already open and gasping to retort.

 

“Sorry. That last part confused me a bit, but it makes sense. But I um, I've heard on good authority that all boys about Junior's age – even highly educated boys in British Library boarding schools – think about that sort of thing. I think it's hormonal. Not that it makes that kind of behaviour any better...”

 

Anita made a disgusted face and stuck her tongue out. “Yuck. You'll never catch me doing that.” Anita turned her back on the room, checking out one particular book more closely.

 

Yomiko shrugged, and eyed the papers for translation. She could get to them later. It wasn't like there was any rush. Well, no more than usual. If they were really pressed for time, Anita would be nagging her instead of pottering about the place and making idle chatter. She flopped onto her back on the bed and picked up her book again. She was halfway through the last sentence she had been reading, when-

 

“Really? _Really?!_ ” Anita sounded curious, a bit astonished. “Did you spy on what they were doing with him, then? What else do you know?!”

 

Sighing, Yomiko closed her book around her index finger and gave up on reading any time soon. “Him? No, not Junior. The British Library used to run a whole schooling program. Even before my time. When I was in high school, I met someone who'd been through it. He told me a few, ahem, stories.”

 

“Really? Who was it?”

 

Yomiko delayed answering for a few seconds, holding her breath against that familiar clutching ache in her chest and slipping a bookmark into her place instead of her finger. She'd have to find a way to mention Donnie in passing – she'd brought him up anyway, thoughtlessly and instinctively – without getting tense or emotional.

 

Before she had gathered herself enough to answer, Anita's mouth was opened in a silent “oh”. She put the book she was holding down and looked at Yomiko apologetically. “Sorry, of course it was Nakajima.”

 

“How did you find out about him, anyway?” It could be useful, if Yomiko knew how much they knew about Donnie. Know what she had to pretend not to know herself.

 

Anita shrugged. “I'm not sure. There was some stuff on him in the stuff we found out, when Dokusensha and The British Library were still around. But when that Gentlemen thing showed up? I think I got some information from that, somehow. Weird things that stuck around. Sometimes when I think about things, especially library catalogues, I get these ideas in my head that don't feel entirely like me.”

 

“Oh, my.” There wasn't much more that Yomiko could say in response. How had they gotten onto this topic, anyway? She hadn't meant to come off on this tangent, or to get so close to the secrets that she still wanted to be keeping close to her chest. She stared down at her own fingers for a long three seconds, before she remembered what Anita had been worried about in the first place.

 

“In any case, Donnie was a very well read and polite young man. But, he told me, he still liked reading porn best at that age. Boys just develop a high sexual drive early in life, and then it slowly slows down over life. Girls are different, I think. We have this slow incremental development, and the highest sexual activity is about what, thirty, or so? I think that's what it was...”

 

Yomiko was rambling, she knew it, and winced at her own words, but they worked; Anita was staring into space herself and connecting what Yomiko had said back with the start of their conversation. She was obviously less furious than she'd been when she came in. Whatever it was about Junior that was upsetting her most had faded away. Instead of talking more about boys, Anita was looking at Yomiko thoughtfully.

 

“Like you, you mean?”

 

“I am going to pretend that you didn't say that. Please, don't think about me and sex. The last time a schoolgirl had a crush on me...”

 

Anita scrunched her face in disgust. “Shit, you mean Nene-ne, don't you? Oh, ew!”

 

It was, maybe, a little too easy to bait someone like Anita. She didn't blush like Donnie had, just looked affronted and upset, but it was still easy to get a reaction. “Oh don't be like that, poor Sumiregawa-Sensei! You mean you've never had a crush on anyone?”

 

All right, maybe it was just as easy to make Anita blush as it was Donnie, if you knew the right things to touch upon. Instead of yelling like she often did, Anita just scuffed her feet about and tried to hide her pink cheeks. They went back to their books, and an awkward kind of comfortable silence fell between them. Often, Yomiko found it hard to know when conversations were over, or when people wanted to leave. When it was and was not rude to say goodbye, when it would upset someone. She was pretty sure she had thoughtlessly and entirely unintentionally hurt Nenene's feelings that way.

 

Luckily Anita needed no such considerations. She just picked up a few books here and there, nodded and saluted Yomiko with them on her way out through the door. Unlike most of the admittedly few guests Yomiko had in her apartment, Anita didn't knock over any piles. The books simply shrugged and sighed and amicably accommodated the presence of a paper user.

 

So, there was silence. Now that she had the space to focus on her book alone, she couldn't. Too full of words. Even more words, now. Too many. Yomiko gave up on them and turned to the easier job of translation. It was easier to focus on words that meant nothing, and needed a dictionary for the tougher legalese. Before she knew it, she was fading out into a meditative state, palms flat-down on the documents on the table before her.

 

She finished it all in record time. Not even very late in the evening, and the streets below were still bustling with activity. Yomiko decided to walk the papers to the storekeeper right then, rather than waiting till morning. In the end, it was that that made all the difference in the world. She'd handed the copy of her translation over in a tidy envelope, and was making polite conversation about the new stock arrivals – having some set aside for herself – when the newspaper article pinned to the wall behind the register caught her eye. It was a photograph of the new President Cole, shaking hands with someone familiar looking, beneath the large headline that proclaimed _Book Me Into the White House! - President Cole wins election on literary merits!_

 

Yomiko apologised when she realised she'd trailed off and stopped listening to Mr. Murai. “Sorry, I just... I hadn't read about that. Could I take a closer look?”

 

He smiled eagerly and pulled the pins out, laid the rough greyish paper on the counter between them. “Yeah, scandalous, isn't it? They're saying that he's just a middleman, that Google's behind the government. But I know something different, from a friend in China, who paid close attention to Dokusensha after that mess you got yourself into with them. It's the government that's behind Google's book deal. Governmental representatives from that guy's state, they bought out Dokusensha. And the US military are the blokes who showed up to clean up London after it all. I bet -”

 

Yomiko didn't register anything else he said. She knew that profile, that half-smile, even those glasses anywhere. It was Donnie, shaking hands with President Cole. But it also wasn't. His posture, it was more reminiscent of Joker than the Donnie that she knew. What Mr. Murai was saying just confirmed her own suspicions. Donnie hadn't died, or at least his genes hadn't. President Cole must have known enough about the British Library's machinations to know exactly what to look for in the remains of The British Library and the various labs and training centres scattered around the world. She wondered if they'd used all of Donnie, of whatever was left of him... or if they'd just made the simplest clone they could make, with the genetic information that came from his remains. He didn't look like he was poorly made. He looked stable and sane and all there – for all that you could tell from a photograph. But he probably wasn't Donnie. Yomiko doubted if there had been enough left of his mind, his personality, for it to ever be truly Donnie again.

 

“It's disgusting.” She said vehemently, agreeing both with Mr. Murai's sentiments and her own revulsion. She patted the envelope on the counter, and nodded decisively. “But we're working on it.”

 

She didn't want to go home quite yet, but she also didn't want to stay in Jinbochou. Not that she wasn't comfortable in the bookstores, but she didn't want to chat happily with any of the regulars or shopkeepers. She'd had about enough conversations on the topic of books, America and Google for one day. Instead she walked along the streets beside small apartment blocks and local businesses. She craned her neck to look up at the electric hazy orange lights of Tokyo's skyline, and the blue-green of traffic lights. The place looked so different to London that somehow it reminded her of it. The yellowish bright streetlights, the sharp fluorescence of the tube stations and the tall imposing marble buildings that sat solemn and anachronistic between skyscrapers and shopping centres. In winter, even when snow made things fuzzy around the edges, there was this cool sharp edge to everything. Crisp like an apple at the back of your throat.

 

It had been wonderful perfection, to run up the stairs to Donnie's apartment. When she got to the top her hair was messy, her cheeks bright pink-red. He'd open the door to her, and suddenly she'd be in the easiest place in the world to be. In Japan, she was a half-caste madwoman, taller and softer and sweatier and hairier than was acceptable. She intimidated people just by being a polyglot, which was weird because fully Japanese people learned languages all the time without being thought strange. In England she was a short, timid shy-looking Asian girl. Cute, too-thin and too-frail and nobody ever believed that she'd spent holidays in the country every year for her entire childhood. But Donnie was just as half-caste as she was, and just as bookish as she was, and until she'd met him she'd never known you could feel that way with anyone other than your own family.

 

It woke something tribal up in her. Like she was recognising her own species, or at least her own culture. Donnie saw it in her too, she knew it. Without speaking or having to quantify it they both knew that whether they shared mentorship, friendship or something deeper they would cleave together as kindred souls for the rest of their lives. Falling in love was really just an afterthought. Sexual attraction came and went, but people that really belonged to each other were rare.

She'd cried over Donnie, felt depressed over Donnie, missed Donnie. But Yomiko had never done this before, strolling and remembering him fondly. There had always been that ache, even earlier in the day, when she was talking to Anita. This was something entirely new. She didn't miss him, didn't feel any regret or heartache. She didn't even feel guilt over having slept with Ridley – thinking all the while it was Donnie – or fury over how Joker had manipulated all of them into a hopeless self-destructive mess.

 

She just felt content and at peace. It was odd. Shouldn't she be angry or hurting inside? That photograph touched right back on everything that had motivated her for the last few years; the abuse and cloning, the betrayals and lies and revenge. She paused halfway across an overpass and leant against the barrier. She took her glasses off – Donnie's frames and her prescription lenses – and turned them in her hands so that she was looking at them, eye to eye, so to speak.

 

Maybe it was because there was no chance they weren't going to do something about it. Nancy had obviously disappeared earlier because she'd wanted to spare Yomiko the trauma of meeting a cloned Donnie. Perhaps the others were aware of it, too. At the very least the Three Paper Sisters and accompanying Best Writer Ever were already knee-deep in plotting regarding the Google Books affair. So she knew, just looking at that photograph, that somehow in the next year or two she'd get to America or Britain or wherever _he_ was at the time, and meet him. She'd discover just how much of Donnie was left in him, if anything at all. More importantly, they would destroy President Cole and whoever else was at the core of this conspiracy. Whatever evil was represented by the newspaper article, they would find in in time enough to stop it.

 

Yomiko wasn't in any rush to have another big fight. She could wait a few months. In a way it was easy, even though it should be complicated. If the man was Donnie himself, in any way at all, he would work to help them. If he was not then he was just another I-jin; one that was possibly less familiar to her than the Paper Sisters, Nancy, and Junior were. If it came down to it she would of course choose to protect the true successors of Donnie's bibliomania and legacy. There was more to it than just genetics and appearances. It had to do with the way that you recognised people that were in your tribe. Yomiko mightn't have warmed to everyone as easily as she had to Donnie, but she still recognised them in that deep profound way. She was a part of them, and they of her.

 

She had to admit to the glasses as she held them before her face, silently, that if she was offered the original Donnie back, complete and sane and himself, she would sacrifice anyone in the world. Everyone in the world. But there was no chance in hell that his mind had survived the years in the clone-farm, let alone the aftermath of that final fight with Joker.

 

The cars of Tokyo squalled and bickered on the street below, and Yomiko found herself looking north-east. If she could see through the tall buildings and past the ocean, she was almost certain that she'd be able to see Wendy looking right back. Yomiko with her fingers tight around Donnie's glasses – Wendy's clutching a familiar teacup as she handed it to the exhausted shell of Joseph Carpenter's body – and both of them feeling the same. Knowing that they'd never get back what they had lost, but feeling fortunate to have had anything at all in the first place. It wasn't enough when you thought that there was still a chance for recovery. But now, with all hope and despair gone, there was peace enough to be had in that.

 

It was Christmas day, which wasn't celebrated so much in Japan even now, but Wendy and Joker were probably surrounded by snow and cards and well-wishers. Yomiko sighed and slipped her glasses back on. She must be getting old, if she was feeling this nostalgic about people. She'd seen Joker and Wendy more recently than she had her own parents, and certainly more recently than she'd seen most of her old acquaintances and friends. But at the very least, she felt capable of facing a book again, and if she was becoming an old spinster already then that was a good thing. She had maybe only another forty years of solid reading ahead of her before her eyes truly went beyond the point of no return. She took one more look at the skyline then turned sharply on her heel and headed to the companionship and solace of paper.


	5. Birthday Girl

Before the paper sisters there had been a few years where Nenene had spent Christmas with the usual end-of-year industry parties, exchanging pleasantries with Mr. Linho, and sitting in her apartment refreshing the missing person pages and checking her email. The family party had come as a surprise. She'd been touched to be included, really. Nenene felt more like the sort of person whose ideas were suitable in published form as Christmas presents for many people, but that perhaps her company wasn't. Her new family had changed her opinion on that subject quite easily. Though as she hefted a bag of decorations out of the elevator and towards the front door, she grumbled.

 

“I don't see why this has to be such a big thing this year. Did we get a tree last time? And anyway, what do trees even have to do with birthdays?”

 

Michelle smiled vapidly, in that way she did when she knew something hard and painful to swallow at the bottom of it all. “Well, nothing really. But it has a lot to do with Christmas, which I think Junior hasn't celebrated before either. I'm not even sure if he's ever read a story about it. I mean, he's not as old as he looks.”

 

Nenene grunted in agreement, though she really wished that Maggie had been in to lug the damned thing home. It was _heavy_. They cluttered in past the door, Michelle at least obligingly keeping the books in the entryway out of harm's way, a flurry of exhausted poorly co-ordinated construction as they followed the barely translated instructions for assembling the thing.

 

“So is he still growing?” Nenene thought to ask the question once they'd collapsed back into the sofa and were observing the dilapidated and abused looking plastic tree. “I mean, do we know how his growth was accelerated? Will he need any medical care?”

 

Michelle frowned across the room. She stared at her own reflection in the glass doors to the balcony, and Nenene realised that Michelle had been thinking about this for a while. She looked stern, serious. A far cry from her usual theatrical pouts and flouncing.

 

“I think they did it to all of us. We were all vat grown, remember? We're all effectively what they called the I-jin. I think the real difference is that Junior doesn't have any false memories. I have these vague ideas of having grown up and had a normal childhood. He just has...”

 

“Whatever that mad bitch that Wendy turned his world into. Whatever life she gave him.”

 

Michelle tried to smile, but it just looked twisted and pained. “Exactly. I can't remember how I grew up, but from what the doctor says he's developing fine. Just faster than normal.”

 

Nenene boggled. “The  _doctor_ ?”

 

“Oh, right!” Michelle was back in her usual form, one slender hand over her mouth and a tittering laugh. “We went to see a doctor that we met in Toto Books. He seemed very trustworthy, after all.”

 

Nenene would have fumed about how nobody could be trusted. Not after someone in Google or President Cole's coterie had brought Donnie back. But of course she hadn't told anyone about Donnie and she sure as hell wasn't about to. It wasn't jealousy, either. She just didn't want it to hurt Yomiko. One faked appearance of a long dead lover was more than enough for anyone's mental health.

 

So instead Nenene opened her mouth, shut it, and stared at the reflection of the room right beside Michelle. They regarded the lights of the city that shone through their blurry faces.

 

“He has a crush on you, you know.”

 

Michelle sighed, and shrugged with a lopsided smile on her lips. “At least it's on a real woman, and not someone who'd take it badly, like Anita or you.”

 

Nenene made a face. She'd never been that keen on men, let alone boys. But it wasn't like that made her any less of a woman, honestly!

 

Either a trick of the light or evil intent made Michelle's reflection's eyes shine. “... _or_ Maggie.”

 

“He doesn't even deserve to lick her boots.”

 

Michelle placed a hand on Nenene's shoulder, nodding as if she was in on some huge important secret. “I think, perhaps Junior isn't the only person with a crush.”

 

Nenene knew that she'd been spending a bit more time around Maggie than she should have. It was a bit cruel to take advantage of her, but Nenene had a soft spot for the solemn and shy appreciation that Maggie had for her writing. It was hard to hold back from teasing her, or exploiting her small crush.

 

“Yeah, well, she'll grow out of it soon enough, see me for the bitter frigid bitch I am.”

 

Michelle seemed surprised by that, and she was starting to say “I didn't mean Maggie, I meant-” when the door opened and Maggie came in with her arms full of groceries.

 

“Ah, Maggie dearest, welcome home!” Michelle swept away in a swirl of skirts and the scarf she hadn't taken off quite yet. Nenene was left sitting blankly in the living room for a few seconds. Was she missing out on something important? Oh, it hardly mattered. If Maggie was making dinner then Anita and Junior would be coming back soon too, and there were presents and decorations yet to be dealt with.

 

Michelle seemed to be keeping herself busy in the kitchen, getting in Maggie's way and chattering about the things they'd seen at the department store. Michelle didn't need to put on such an act; Nenene knew when she was being wanted in any other room but the one she was in. She headed upstairs to her room and the paper bag full of gifts that they'd agreed the week before were best hidden in escrow under her computer desk.

 

Nenene had objected, until Junior had pointed out that most of the gifts would be books, and hardly take up any space. She couldn't really argue with that, and at the very least it had headed off the fight about to break out between Michelle and Anita. So she dragged the bag out, looked once over the pile of brown paper wrapped books with the names of her strange family written on them, and then pulled the small cardboard packet out of her jacket pocket.

 

It wasn't much. Not really. Just something extra that had caught her eye when they'd been balancing the boxed tree at the train station. A small multiple pack of stiff paper card bookmarks with ukiyo-e woodblock print replicas, reproduced in much smaller sections, and cheap fraying nylon ribbons. About as far from the personalised and finely crafted bookmarks that Yomiko and Michelle both made for everyone as you could get. There was just something about the minimalist lines and the sense of the movement of the wind and the space of it all that reminded Nenene of Maggie, that was all. Even if they were trashy and cheap.

 

It was a bad idea. And who needed bookmarks in their household, let alone a pack of five? Stupid, stupid idea. But then, Maggie would like them...

 

She was vacillating. She should just make a decision and stick with it. She wasn't usually this flighty. She was the stern one, the buck-stops-here member of the family. Gritting her teeth and feeling the chain of her locket itching against the skin of her neck, Nenene took the thin packet of bookmarks out again and set them resolutely down on top of the other presents. Whatever she'd wanted to talk to Maggie about, Michelle had had more than enough time to herself.

 

Nenene slumped downstairs and headed straight for the Christmas tree. “Want to get this stuff done before Junior gets here,” she explained. She set the presents out in neat piles, and by the time she was done with that the odd tension she'd been feeling had loosened up inside. Maggie's cooking smelled wonderful. Michelle was directing a banner saying “Happy Birthday” to attach itself near the roof on the wall closest to facing the front door she could get. Assorted cheap looking Christmas decorations hung here and there, and Nenene was pretty sure she saw some unfortunate New Years things mixed up in the lot.

 

The house was a mess. Chaos. It was like the confusion and frustrations over the events in America had bled through into what had been a sweet and comforting event the year before. But at least there wasn't that much time to think about that. The door was opening, and Anita was shepherding Junior inside. They both had shopping bags that looked full of crap, and Junior was wearing an expression that looked equal parts fear, exhaustion and horror.

 

“I guess Christmas shopping is catching on more this year.” Nenene couldn't help saying as she watched the brats shuffle over to the sofa and collapse into it. Anita noticed the Christmas tree and shrugged, but Junior just stared at it.

 

“Yeah, just a cheap one made of plastic. It's terrible, isn't it?” Nenene rested her elbows against the back of the chair between the kids' heads. “But Michelle got all excited about the special feature.”

 

Anita craned her neck to stare up at Nenene. There were bags under her eyes, and Nenene suddenly worried that she hadn't been paying enough attention to her recently. She hadn't been around much, and Nenene had holed up in her room with Maggie instead of pitching in much with the anti-book settlement efforts. Anita had been working herself too hard, and Nenene should have been there to tell the kid to stop being such an idiot.

 

“Feature?” Anita asked.

 

“Oh, right. Hang on.” Nenene walked over and fumbled around between the branches until she found the switch. “There's fibre optics.”

 

Among the plastic fronds of greenery the small pinpricks of light at the end of the thin cables lit up. They changed colour slowly and added a strange glow to the room.

 

“Huh. Weird.” Anita said. She shrugged. But Junior just stared at it, as if it was the strangest thing he'd ever seen. She looked at Nenene, they shared a confused look. If Junior didn't know what to do at a time like this, they sure as hell didn't know what to do with someone who didn't know what to do.

 

“Presents go under the tree.” Nenene said finally. She stepped back a little and watched carefully as Junior politely and awkwardly unpacked their shopping bags. More books, more brown paper, and a few other small things that were just bundled up in branded shopping bags. As Junior made his way through the pile of stuff, he looked visibly more at ease.

 

Was he taller than when they'd met him? Maybe. He looked older, just a little bit. Not as older as Nenene would have expected, if Dokusensha had grown the I-jin and the Paper Sisters in a matter of years. One year would have been what, a third of his developmental life? Shouldn't he look  _older_ ?

 

Nenene looked over at Maggie, who was bringing something out from the kitchen, setting it down on the coffee table. They had all been force-grown. Even if, as Michelle said, the Paper Sisters had been given false memories to compensate psychologically, there was no guarantee that they were completely normal now. More to the point, they might still be aging rapidly. Nenene's throat closed tightly and she felt a sense of vertigo and dizziness. She couldn't outlive Maggie. Refused to. Couldn't imagine that in a year or two the contentment and warmth of her family might be fading into her memory.

 

“Are you okay?” Maggie paused halfway back to the kitchen.

 

Nenene shook her head, smiled, and nodded. “Yeah. Just remembering what it was like without you guys.”

 

That put a bit of a smile on her face. As soon as she turned away, Nenene grabbed Michelle by the wrist and leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. “Did the files tell you how long you'd live?”

 

Michelle looked surprised, but then laughed and gave Nenene a very fond look. “Oh, it's sweet of you to worry about us. But both the parties involved with our... inception... they wouldn't have risked wasting all the money they put into it. We were built to last. On a technical level we _are_ genetically human, you know.”

 

Nenene felt all the air in her lungs rush out before she realised she'd been holding her breath in the first place. She couldn't put words to what she was feeling. It was a bit of relief, and a bit of something else. Something more hollow. Empty. She'd never felt as scared in her life as she had in the last ten minutes. It was absurd. Not even when she'd been desperate to hang on to Yomiko – when she'd seen the depths of Yomiko's past and the long-reaching grasp of The British Library – had she felt scared like that. When she'd found Yomiko safe and alive after all those years, she hadn't felt this wobbly shocked relief that still shook in her elbows.

 

She had to sit down. Luckily, the world's best tall-dark-and-housewifely girl was there to smile shyly and reassuringly at her, and pour her a glass of... something or other. Nenene hid behind it and felt warmth slowly seep back into limbs she hadn't noticed were feeling cold. She had to say something. Even though nobody was really paying that much attention to her – they were all just being together and happy and maybe putting on a bit more of a show of it for Junior's sake – it felt like the occasion called for something special.

 

There was a present that she'd been a little unsure about wrapping, since it seemed too mundane to be a present and she wasn't sure she should be encouraging any more permanent visitors. She'd have to invest in a house or something, any day now. But it felt right. So Nenene stepped forward, put a hand on Junior's shoulder, and held out the small package in the palm of her hand.

 

“Happy birthday, Junior.”

 

He took it with a look of confusion, as if he didn't know quite what to do with it. Nenene waited, then frowned and poked him in the shoulder.

 

“You open it. It's only keys, anyway. Door, garbage, mailbox and one for the parking garage. Not that you need keys, but since you're in the family you might as well have them. Helps with appearances, and that.”

 

Junior unwrapped the keys carefully, folding up the paper in one hand and feeling the weight of the small keyring with the other. He murmured “Thank you,” and seemed to be searching for something else to say, but Anita interrupted him by shoving a wrapped bookish looking package into his hands and grinding her knuckles into his scalp.

 

“Happy birthday, brat.”

 

Nenene felt a little responsible for some of the names that Anita was calling Junior, but the boy didn't seem to mind. He accepted the gift with another solemn “Thank you,” and then he ducked his head and bent over to pick up one of the bags he'd put beneath the tree. “Happy birthday, Anita.”

 

Anita had been the one to go shopping with him, she obviously knew what she was getting. What looked like a set of straps, presumably gear that she'd use to carry more paper cartridges – Nenene guessed they were about the same colour and shape as some of the others she'd seen Anita wearing. In a strange contrast to the whining she'd been doing recently, Anita nodded silently at Junior, who nodded right back.

 

Shit, they were just kids. Nenene felt like she could see the shadow that Google Books was casting over her family and life. She grit her teeth and smiled as Junior handed her a bag that had a popular outdoor and camping store's branding on the outside. He was as solemn as ever, and stammered a little as he tried to figure out what to say to Nenene – it wasn't _her_ birthday after all – but got out a “Merry Christmas” in the end.

 

Nenene opened the bag, saying “Thank you,” before she'd even looked inside. When she did, she was a little surprised. He'd given her a pocket first-aid kit, some long-lasting dried trail food, an emergency whistle and an assortment of emergency flares. It wasn't the sort of present she was used to, but given the trouble she'd gotten into during her life, it was very practical.

 

“Thank you very much. These are great.”

 

He nodded, and then made his way with care between the raucous mess the girls were making, throwing presents back and forth and bickering with each other. He didn't seem to stand out. Rather, he fitted in, like a natural eye in the storm of their household. They weren't a very well-matched bunch anyway. He seemed to feel more at home, was settling in. There was that smile in the corners of his mouth again, and a pinkness about his cheeks as he stood beside Michelle and tried to catch her attention.

 

Really, the present he'd given Nenene said it all. He knew she wasn't as strong as they were, and that she'd been vulnerable in the past. He wanted her to be safe. Nenene only hoped that the other present she'd wrapped for him, a clean new pillow and set of sheets, managed to convey a similar message instead of just being boring. _You belong here no matter what happens elsewhere_.

 

“You can't escape this just by standing over there, like some detached observer.” Anita smirked and threw a heavy looking book her way.

 

Nenene caught it, but the corners dug into her palms and she winced. “Hey, no cheating like that!” It really was unfair, whether Anita had used her young athletic muscles or her powers. Anita poked her tongue out, Nenene rolled her eyes and pulled a stupid face. She'd have said something else, maybe walked across the room and ground her knuckles into the top of Anita's scalp, but her half-squinting eye fell on Maggie, and everything changed. She felt her face relaxing out of its comical grimace, she probably looked completely dumbfounded, but she couldn't help it. Couldn't do anything but look at Maggie, sitting on her heels with her long legs bent beneath her and staring down at the packet of bookmarks. Maggie wasn't blushing, but it was obvious that she knew who they were from. Her lips were slightly parted, the corners raised in a gentle smile. Her fingers brushed against the cardboard packet and there was this happiness in her entire face and demeanour that left Nenene feeling like she'd been knocked for six.

 

Nenene felt a little too tight and awkward, compared to the slow calm peace that Maggie seemed to always carry with her. Clumsy and small and humid, with her heartbeat so fast in her chest. Her fingers were sweaty and sticking to the wrapping paper of the book she'd mostly forgotten, and she began picking at the tape in the corners absently. Maggie wasn't looking at her yet, still just looking down at those stupid bookmarks, and Nenene felt too full of everything to cope. She just wanted to be in her room, back in that quiet place with books and Maggie, where she could hide from herself. Nenene turned her head down and away so that if Maggie looked up their eyes wouldn't meet. She focused very resolutely on unwrapping her present and blinking back the unexpected moisture in her eyelashes.

 

It was a book Nenene had heard about, of course, but not one she'd read before. It was obviously from Maggie, because it was in English and Nenene knew she'd seen copies in Japanese in one of the newer stacks in her room. This was part of their ongoing promise, which seemed to have had all along much more significance than Nenene had realised. An anthology of short stories, Ray Bradbury, _I Sing the Body Electric_. Another of Maggie's favourite writers, a book for them to share, now. Nenene pressed her nose between the pages close to the spine, and inhaled the strange dusty dry scent that came off of thick pulpy American paper. A writer like Bradbury, American, between the 60s and 80s, low quality paper was more likely than high-grade stuff to indicate a surviving first or early print for some books. They had cult appeal, and the binding glue in those cheap editions died young. Yomiko had taught her, once, when they'd been chasing a robot simulacrum obsessed serial killer, and had stumbled across Phillip K. Dick's _We Can Build You_ on his bookshelf.

 

Maggie touched her hand gently, and opened the book to a scene involving, from what words Nenene understood, a bathroom, some tiles, a mosaic. Maggie slid one of her new picture bookmarks in, and there was a promise of _later_ in her eyes that started a shiver at the base of Nenene's spine. She felt, inexplicably, grumpy. Happy and grumpy. It was easier to turn around and lean back into the curve of Maggie's arm than think about it.

 

“So how are you finding today, Junior? Do you like Christmas?” Michelle had a secret, loving smile for Junior that made Nenene want to give the woman a stern talking to about appropriateness and teenage boys and crushes. For once, Junior didn't blush at it. He was folding lumpy, bent paper cranes out of the leftover wrapping paper and lining them up on the floor beneath the tree.

 

“It's just another day, after all.” He sounded thoughtful rather than disappointed, but Michelle's smile faltered anyway.

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yes. It is like gender, or government, or books. Cultural constructs that are nothing without people.”

 

Anita squinted at him. “So translated into sane-person language, you're saying it's family, not calendars, that make holidays special.”

 

Junior nodded. “Though it sounds very mundane and small when you put it into words.”

 

Nenene shrugged. “Most important things do. Whatever you do kid, don't become a writer when you grow up.”

 

Maggie's arm was warm and close against her belly, Anita had left the room to call Hisami, Michelle was tying plaits in Junior's hair while he played with his keyring, letting the keys fall in turn through his fingers to clink against each other. They had all fought so much, and they had hardly had enough respite. Junior, in particular, needed time just to live and grow and become used to himself. Nenene was sick of being kidnapped, sick of being the victim, of running after people or waiting for the mistakes of the past to catch up with them all. She had to do something, before things started happening, because if there was one thing she'd learned from recent events it was that Nancy was as bad as Yomiko at communicating ideas and working in a team. Postcards and scraps of information wouldn't be enough.

 

There was a knock at the door. Nenene waved everyone else back to what they'd been doing, and she heaved herself up, walked over. She'd half expected it to be Yomiko – who else would be around and visiting at that time of night – but when she opened the door and saw her there, she still felt shocked. Instead of hello, or that they were going to get active and involved now, she opened her mouth and said “Donnie's alive.”

 

Yomiko didn't look surprised.

 

“Well, maybe not Donnie, but I'm sure it's his appearance. Maybe someone like Ridley, or they cloned him?”

 

Yomiko nodded, still not surprised. “I know,” she said, “I was going to wait until something happened, or you were ready, but I can't... Oh.”

 

Yomiko knew her well enough to see it in Nenene's eyes. It was scary as all hell now, but Nenene felt justice and fury and anticipation. She stepped aside to let Yomiko in.


	6. Where We Live Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's just another day at home, and that organising escape routes is almost routine isn't even worth thinking about. There's too many socks to pair off before they pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note on Canon: So here's where we get a bit more into the mess of using multiple canons. Using the manga, OVA and TV mean that though in the TV it seems Nenene has never met Joseph Carpenter or Wendy (Earheart), in the Manga it's pretty clear she's familiar with members of the British Library. So let's just pretend that Nenene has known Wendy and known of Joker since her adolescence, and of course met them in the course of the TV events. Now we're getting into more plot and more conflicts between the various canon elements I'm using, the likelihood I've made mistakes is increasing. Please, if you like to, nitpick and review/comment or PM me so that I can fix things. My beta is slow and I'm pushing a couple of chapters out before she can get to them so that I don't end up with a long hiatus between things.
> 
> Note on languages, feel free to skip but if you review commenting on it I might redirect you here: Someone's commented already that Nenene's parents work in an English speaking country and Nenene is conversationally fluent in English, as a response to the books she's reading with Maggie. I'm working under the assumption that Nenene's never lived in an English-speaking country, rarely reads books written in English herself, and has an operating comprehension level equivalent to some of my past housemates; enough to read a book, but not enough to grasp complex grammar and vocabulary. Since Nenene's a writer and Maggie's a multilingual bibliophile, to me it makes all the sense in the world for Maggie to be reading and translating for Nenene. During the book tour, facing things like questions from audiences, in my mind it isn't odd for Nenene to officially require a translator. I didn't mean to imply Nenene couldn't speak English, or that you have to be perfect to be able to read books or hold a conversation in a second or third language, I've just helped with a lot of presentations and things myself, and editing and explaining words in context, because no speaker of any language is perfect. If I gave anyone that impression at all, I did not mean to at all. Also, ooops, that was longer than I thought it'd be.

The phone only rang five times before someone picked it up, which seemed very prompt to Nenene given how busy everyone had seemed the week before. She barely had time to mention her own name, let alone her agent's, before she was transferred through. She didn't have long to wait then, either.

 

“Hello? It's Nishida.”

 

“Hi, Sumiregawa here.”

 

The breath that Nishida let out on the other end of the line sounded relieved and exhausted. “Ah, great. Hello. I'm glad you called actually, I had a favour to ask of you.”

 

Nenene grimaced. “First, can I ask you something?”

 

“Um, I suppose... yes. Of course you can. I can't promise we can do much right now, but ask away.”

 

Nenene wondered how many deadlines the woman was under, that she sounded so strained and tense. “Well, it's been a while since I toured anywhere for a book release. I know there's a translated version coming out in America soon, and I was wondering if I could do a tour over there? I know it's odd for the author to be instigating this kind of thing, but...”

 

Nenene was playing by the book; trying to sound a bit more effeminate and wily, trailing off ambiguously to try and let Nishida fill in the gaps politely. Nishida, however, had obviously left her worries about courtesy at home that day.

 

“Oh, thank fuck.”

 

Nenene couldn't stare at Nishida in confusion, so she looked down at the floor of the kitchen and ignored Anita as she brushed past to get into the fridge.

 

“I... take it that's a yes?”

 

“Oh yes!” Nishida spoke quickly, happily, babbling. “We've been trying to find enough people to spare, to have a good presence at the Book Expo. If you could sit at a table there, since we'd already have paid for your airfare, I'm sure we could arrange some sort of tour.”

 

Nenene wasn't sure she liked the idea of sitting all day at a loud bustling convention, but the Book Expo would be good for other things. Namely, it would get them access to some behind the scenes areas that would be shared with all the other vendors and representatives; it would get them close to the Google team.

 

“Ah, that's good to know. I'm glad I could help. Do you need any more people then? Some of my housemates have gone on tours with me before, helped with, er, event management. I was hoping to invite some along anyway, and they probably know your back catalogue better than you do yourself, they read so much.”

 

Nishida must have been under a lot of pressure, because she didn't seem to think twice before agreeing. “Of course. That would be a big help. You said they've worked with us before?”

 

Nenene could hear her typing as she spoke.

 

“Yes.”

 

“The Paper Sisters?”

 

“Well, one of them, yes. Maggie Mui. The other is a friend who worked with me a while before that, Yomiko Readman.”

 

There was silence at the other end of the line. Obviously, Yomiko was still slightly infamous amongst the literary world. Nishida drew in a slow breath and Nenene could almost hear her nodding slowly at the other end of the line. “Well, we are pressed for staff. Just... you're going to be the only one carrying an expenses card.”

 

Nenene pinched herself trying not to laugh. “I understand. Though they know their stuff, having free reign at a book fair... I'd have suggested measures like that myself.”

 

“Right, right. I'll email some dates and itineraries to you as soon as I can, then. The Book Expo's in June, I think. You want to do the tour before or after?”

 

Nenene rolled her shoulders and paused to pretend that she was thinking. It was a no-brainer, really. “Before would be ideal.”

 

The phone rattled against Nishida's earrings as she nodded. “Okay, good. And do you mind playing promotional rep in a few other places? Dropping off some samples and catalogues at some libraries?”

 

“Sure, I guess.”

 

The conversation dragged on, with Nishida sounding frazzled and confused. They really were overworked. Nenene agreed and objected and said thank you, and then there she was in the living room with an ear hot-red and sore from being pressed against the phone for so long. She'd forgotten she was in there, she'd been so lost in her own mind thinking about travel arrangements. Part of it was perhaps due to the unusual silence in the house.

 

Maggie, she assumed, was up in their shared room reading. Junior's cupboard door was slightly ajar, which meant that he was in and doing whatever it was he did in there. Nenene imagined it involved trying to pretend to himself that he wasn't reading the two postcards from Nancy over and over again, and failing. But there were no voices, no bickering. Nenene wasn't sure if that reassured her or scared her.

 

Still, she was planning a long trip overseas without them. She'd already basically handed over the household budget to their whims.

 

“When I get back, this house will be full of empty takeaway containers, books, and milk bottles.” Nenene turned her head back towards the stairway cupboard. “So you'd better keep those two in line for me.”

 

Junior, as she'd expected, poked his head out of there looking a bit confused and a bit embarrassed that he'd been caught eavesdropping.

 

“I said, I'm going to leave you here as the responsible one. I know it'll be hard standing up to Michelle, but you're going to be the, er, man of the hou- apartment. The voice of reason.”

 

Junior frowned and came out properly, joining her on the sofa. “Anita's the one who fights with me. Michelle's always nice.”

 

He blushed as he said the last part. Nenene scrubbed a hand over her face and wondered at the obliviousness of youth. “And that's exactly what I mean. Anita, you will be prepared to stand up against, because of _course_ she'll yell at you no matter what. But Michelle will be sweet and endearing and lovely. Which isn't bad at all, except that she's got the worst mind for figures in the whole northern hemisphere. So you gotta make sure she doesn't waste all your food money.”

 

Junior looked down at his feet. “I'm not sure I can do that.”

 

Nenene clapped him on the back, pleasantly surprised when the boy didn't phase out – which he had the last time she'd tried a fast move on him. He seemed to be settling in a bit better, though you couldn't tell from his stiff demeanour.

 

“Yeah? Just wait till your first week living off of leftover rice and those tinned lychees in the back of the cupboard. You'll find the courage to stand up in the name of painful hunger, if not adequate nutrition.”

 

There was a silence between them. It was one of those moments that Nenene tried not to write about too often, because there was hardly anything you could say other than that the world was generally normal and quiet, and there was a silence between two people that was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable.

 

“Thank you.” He said.

 

“For what?” She asked.

 

“Well,” Junior blushed and turned away from her, “you believe that I can do a lot more than I really can. You have faith in me. It's not... not something I'm used to. Ms. Earheart would give me parameters and occasionally congratulate me, but whenever I was given a task to perform beyond my capabilities, I would be told afterwards that it was only be a test. She never believed in me.”

 

“Oh, get over yourself. Sure she did. Wendy might have become a callous bitch in her old age, but she was always vulnerable to loving lost boys like you. She mightn't have told you, but I'm sure that at least half the time she told you that because she felt guilty. Because she'd let her faith in you undermine achieving their goals, or maybe because she didn't want you to feel like you'd failed.”

 

Junior turned to look at Nenene with such naked pain and hope and  _want_ on his face that she had trouble believing it was the same kid that had sat down next to her a minute before.

 

“You think so?”

 

“Of course I do.”

 

Junior was getting sad. A bit teary around the edges. Shit, Nenene sucked at things like that. Michelle would just swoop in all flowing skirts and perfume-scented sympathy. It was hard enough with Maggie, and  _she_ was probably the closest that Nenene had got to any one person in a long time.

 

“Good,” Junior said after he'd taken the time to collect himself. The boy didn't seem to do any better with emotions than Nenene did, and that relieved her a little.

 

“Good.”

 

“Though that does mean that I failed on those missions...”

 

Nenene threw a cushion at him. “I know you kids are supposed to angst, but of all the reasons... go do something fun. Find a brainless cartoon and watch it obsessively, or steal some of Michelle's panties from the laundry basket. When she gets upset and Anita beats you up,  _then_ you'll have something to mope about. Wait, don't. Don't steal anyone's undies. That was a joke. Ha, ha, ha. Um. Never mind.”

 

Junior just stared at her like she'd grown a second head. Right, so, perhaps they weren't at the cushion-throwing and joking level of familiarity yet. Nenene shrugged and wandered into the kitchen. She ruffled Anita's hair and put the kettle on.

 

“Are you going to survive, with me taking two of your translators away?”

 

Anita wrinkled her nose. “Are _you_?”

 

Nenene pretended that she had no idea what Anita meant by that.

 

Anita rolled her eyes. “You're taking a laptop, they can type, what's the problem?”

 

“The problem is it's _my_ laptop. Have you seen how clumsy Yomiko is with anything that's not thin, white and made of wood pulp?!”

 

“Have you seen what _Google_ 's like?”

 

Nenene grit her teeth and decided that a spare laptop could surely be put on expenses for the trip. “Point taken, brat. I'll figure something out. But they will be supposed to do some work for me, you know, and on top of that we'll be trying to figure out what the hell Cole is doing.”

 

Anita snorted and laughed loudly in Nenene's face. “As if! You'll have enough trouble keeping those two's feet on the ground. I bet you'll just rely on Drake, Nancy, and me to do all your work.”

 

Nenene shrugged. “Well you are oddly competent, for your height.”

 

Anita looked like she was about to fume, but instead of the usual raised voice and indignant pout, she simply gave Nenene a stern look and crossed her arms.

 

“Hey, kiddo, watch out or you'll turn into a grown-up one of these days.”

 

Anita kept a calm face as she kicked Nenene in the shin.

 

“Fuck, that hurts!” Nenene reached down to rub at the sore spot, and caught sight of Junior in the corner of her eye. He had moved to stand at the edge of the bench, and was watching them.

 

“You did deserve it,” he said in his calm even voice, “er... Ma'am.”

 

“ _Ma'am_?!”

 

Nenene wasn't sure whether to gape or laugh, so she just kept rubbing her leg. Anita seemed entirely floored, staring at Junior. The moment hung between them, until Junior brushed past them both to pick the kettle up.

 

“I'll make the tea.”

 

Anita nodded her head towards Junior, and crossed her eyes, poked her tongue out. Nenene raised her eyebrows, and shrugged.

 

“Thanks, I'll just go sit down, then.”

 

Anita shoved a stack of papers to the side of the low table and stretched out across it. She laced her fingers together and cracked them.

 

“Hey, you're too young to be getting arthritis,” Nenene took Anita's hands in her own and rubbed them where they looked sore, a little pinkish around the knuckles. “It's not going to be the end of the world, and you do have people to help you.”

 

“I know, but it's different, now.”

 

Nenene frowned. Anita had a very old, very strange expression on her face. “Are you okay? It's no different than last time, except we know what's happening and we're organised, kiddo. Let us pick up some of the slack, sometime. Hell, bully Michelle into doing something one of these days.”

 

“She does stuff, she does. She helps.”

 

Nenene bit her lip, but said nothing. Anita was lifting herself up, turning to look out the window. She obviously had more to say.

 

“Anyway, it's like a compulsion. I have to do this.”

 

Anita's hands were slack in her lap. She sounded worn-out, and Nenene was not surprised. She'd been doing too much, and there was an energy debt just waiting to be paid.

 

“Yeah, I know. But you gotta sleep, too. Take care of yourself, so you can keep doing it.”

 

“Yeah, like you when you're writing? You're one to talk. You're wrong. It's different to that, even. I should tell you, before you-”

 

“Tea.” Junior set a tray down on the low table, pausing as he realised he'd interrupted something. “Sorry, I can go.”

 

“No, it's okay,” Anita waved a hand, “I wanted to talk to you about something. Nenene's leaving, anyway.”

 

Nenene raised an eyebrow. “I am?”

 

Anita sighed and cupped her hands around a teacup. “You've got to take Maggie her tea, and pretend you aren't talking about me behind closed doors.”

 

Nenene would have protested that she wasn't going to do that, but of course Anita knew her too well. She patted both the kids on the head as condescendingly as she knew how, but with a warm smile, and picked up the tray once they'd both lifted their cups off.

 

“Have fun, then, in your cabal of youth.”

 

Nenene didn't hear a word out of either of them as she headed upstairs. The second she kicked her bedroom door shut behind herself, it felt like the temperature had warmed a few degrees. Maggie, who was lying with her head resting on the edge of Nenene's bed, smiled up at Nenene and closed her book.

 

“Junior made us tea,” Nenene waited until they were sitting side-by-side and had their first few sips before she even tried to know where to start.

 

“We're good for the trip, we'll sort out details once little girl wonder down there organises our schedule for us.”

 

“Mn? That's nice.” Maggie nodded.

 

“Um. Has Anita seemed off, recently, to you?”

 

Maggie stared into her cup silently. She thought for a very long while, it seemed, before answering. “Maybe. Sometimes. But sometimes you look like you're remembering things, too. We've all been a bit off.”

 

“Maybe.” There was a silence between them, and for the first time in a while, it was very uncomfortable. Nenene drank her tea too quickly, and burned the roof of her mouth a little.

 

“I think she's been scared that she lost part of herself, but most of the time I think she's just learning to cope with being herself. There aren't any books that can explain how to find a reference for something that's outside of human experience.”

 

Nenene nodded. “I guess you'd need something written by someone like you, for that to work.”

 

Maggie shook her head. “Not even then. We don't fit into patterns, there aren't the right words for it within human experience, in any language.”

 

Nenene didn't know what to say, and Maggie didn't say anything more. When she sipped her tea, she found it was cold already. She drank it all anyway, and fought the desire to lie down and hide in her pillow. She had to keep moving, or she'd lose inertia before they even left the country.

 

She got up and started collecting socks and things from the floor. They didn't have much laundry, but with Junior and that critical household mass, everyone had been getting less done. “Gotta clean enough stuff to start packing, I guess.”

 

Maggie still didn't answer. When Nenene turned to look at her, dirty clothing sagging in her arms, she saw that Maggie was sitting very still with a full cup of stone-cold tea in her hands.

 

“Maggie? Is it about leaving your sisters? You can stay home and I can bring Junior instead, if you'd like.”

 

Maggie shook her head. Nenene sighed, and dropped everything on the floor. She sat back down beside Maggie, because it seemed like the thing to do.

 

“Are you worried about Anita?” Nenene rubbed her hand up and down Maggie's back in an attempt to comfort her, but she had to bite her lip to keep from saying it. _What if Anita hadn't been left completely whole after the incident at the Museum with Joker and Gentlemen?_

 

Maggie shook her head again. “No.” After a few seconds she amended, “Yes, but it's not what's... I've been worried about that every day.”

 

Nenene waited it out. Maggie stared down at her own hands, gathering her thoughts.

 

“I'm worried,” she finally said, “about being in the way.”

 

What the hell? Nenene blinked, taken completely by surprise by that one. “What the hell? What are you on about? In whose way?”

 

“Yours, or, ah, well, _hers_.”

 

Maggie wasn't very comfortable around Yomiko, Nenene knew that, but Maggie had to know how very little that mattered, too. “You've never been in anyone's way. We work well together, all of us. We might mess up, get confused, but we get there in the end.”

 

Maggie seemed to sink lower, though that had to be impossible with her tall and straight bones. “Sensei, please. I'm sorry I brought it up.”

 

Nenene smacked Maggie on the shoulder lightly. “Now what the hell? If we're doing this, we're doing this, okay?”

 

She arranged them so they were face-to-face, looking down at Maggie. “If it's about...”

 

Nenene didn't know how to breach the topic herself, now it came down to it. How could you awkwardly say something like 'sorry, if you have a crush on me, but the person I used to have a crush on wouldn't ever take me up on anything, so if you're worried, don't be?' There were too many levels of privacy it breached. Maggie obviously didn't want to talk about it. Nenene didn't want to really highlight how sick feeling jealous of Nancy made her feel. But there had to be a way to reassure her, right? Before they were on a long flight and longer trip together.

 

“Look, you live here, she doesn't. She's known me longer, you know I'd give my life for her. But whatever happens, at the end of the day I come home with you.”

 

Maggie dropped her eyes back down again, but there was a quiet blush on her cheeks. Nenene sighed and flopped onto her back on Maggie's mattress. She poked a toe at the pile of laundry.

 

“You okay?”

 

“Mn.”

 

Nenene sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. “Anyway. _I'm_ worried about Anita. But I'm pretty sure it's stuff the brat has to work through in her own head, in her own time. Whether I'm here or not, she'll keep doing that. Right?”

 

Maggie nodded. “Yes, I think so. There's Junior here, too.”

 

Nenene frowned thoughtfully. “Hadn't thought about it that way, really. You're right. They'll get along all right. Let's pack, then. The sooner we put all our clothes in, the sooner we know how many books we can fit.”

 

“Mn.”

 

Maggie wasn't okay, not really. But Nenene had no idea how to make things right. She braced both hands on Maggie's shoulders, leaned in, and pressed what she hoped was a comforting kiss to Maggie's forehead. Maggie made a soft, surprised sound. Nenene jumped back. Where the hell had that come from? She hadn't even thought to do it, she'd just kind of... gone and done it. Her face was bright red. Her heart was racing. She turned her back on Maggie and coughed.

 

“So, laundry. Laundry, laundry, laundry. I'll be back in a bit.”

 

“O-okay. But Sensei? You said we weren't going to go for a month or two...”

 

Nenene swore. “Well we'll be very ready for it then, won't we?” She knew without looking, just knew, that Maggie was reaching out after her, trying to hold onto whatever that moment had been, but Nenene didn't feel able to cope with it. She shut the bedroom door behind her, and stomped down the stairs to the washing machine.


	7. Ex Libris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Narita Airport to a Motel bathroom, Yomiko tries to read things.

Narita airport was always busy, but crowds were a good thing. The crowds on the way in the train had made Yomiko's silence more or less inaudible, and then there had been saying goodbye to everyone before customs. Now, sitting on one side of Nenene and noticing Maggie's messy hair out of the corner of her eyes as she tried to read, Yomiko felt needlessly and shamefully quiet. Awkward. There was something charged and odd in the air between Nenene and Maggie. It was sadder and heavier than the adoration that Yomiko had for Nenene as an author, and even more so than the love that Nenene had had for Yomiko once.

 

Was it okay to be jealous? She didn't feel like it was fair. She'd _had_ that once-in-a-lifetime love with Donnie, and she'd chosen books over him in the end. She'd had far more than that, with Nenene's more innocent younger self, and then Nancy and the other Nancy. Sweetness that was nice but never really enough. It wasn't just that books took precedence, but that there was a chain of logic. She'd loved Donnie first and most, and she'd chosen books over him. She'd choose books over Nenene, even if she'd managed to give up a page or two to save her life in the past. Knowing what caused your heart pain wasn't enough to stop yourself from making the same mistakes.

 

Nenene polished her glasses, which were in Yomiko's own old frames, and slipped them back on. It made Yomiko feel a little better somehow, and she was disgusted at the possessiveness in herself. It wasn't fair, it wasn't healthy. Nenene's hand was resting on the top of Maggie's thigh as they shared a book between them, and she didn't seem to notice.

 

Perhaps it was that Maggie and Nenene had someone to read alongside, to share books with. Yomiko had had that in her hands, and she'd already made her choice. She'd thrown it away, a book in the hand at the expense of all those moments with other books for the rest of her life.

 

She frowned, and stared hard at the pages she was trying to read. Just as she felt herself slipping away and the persona of the narrative sliding in over her own identity, absorbed, their boarding call pulled her back to the uncomfortable waiting lounge and the irritations of her thoughts.

 

Nenene waited for Maggie to mark their place in the book, stood, and stretched. “Well, that's us.”

 

They filed onto the plane, clumsy and bulky with their hand-luggage – enough books to last the journey and enough choice to suit a few moods – and settled into their close quarters amicably enough. Nenene had wanted the window seat, so Yomiko had stated a preference for the aisle before anyone had a chance to feel weird about things.

 

Takeoff was fine, even if the shuddering of metal and plastic made Yomiko long for the light stability of paper. The first hour or two was all right, with books and hot towels and cups of water and tea all around. But then Maggie had brought out a copy of a Chinese classic. She had read aloud, translating, to Nenene, and the soft murmuring wasn't quite loud enough for Yomiko to hear, and not quiet enough to ignore.

 

“Excuse me, I'll be back in a little while.”

 

“Sure, sure.” Nenene waved a hand in acknowledgement and put a finger against a word on the page. “How do you say that one properly?”

 

Yomiko shut herself in a toilet cubicle, and wished it was a real bathroom in a private area so that she could lean her forehead against cool, hard, clean tiles. She compromised for letting her head hang forwards – not so far her hair reached the ground – as she squatted over the bowl and settled in for a few minutes of feeling all these emotions so that when she went back out there she'd be able to keep it all inside. She took deep breaths and tried to remind herself that life wasn't romance fiction. Sometimes the story ends romantically when the couple gets together, and you never see all the hard parts that come after. This was the after. There was a before, a happy romance, and she'd been able to have that. She was fortunate. You could make a good few books like that out of Yomiko's life. Sweet romances, warm hands and hearts. There were adventures there, too. Fantasy and science fiction. Tragedies as good as they came in Classical Greece, redemption and atonement like some high literature. Chaos and moments and objects in space like postmodern fiction. Episodes like a light serialised novel. She had them all inside her, part of her, and right now all she really needed to cure herself of this mood and feeling of loss was to wash her hands, clean her glasses, plug the earphones into the arm of her chair and pick up one of those sweet romances. She could be someone else, Donnie could be the everyman cast opposite, and outside of the restrictions of their realities there could be eternity between them.

 

When they disembarked and had finally made their way through the xenophobic and exhaustive customs of America, they emerged into Los Angeles International Airport. Maggie carried most of their bags, and was keeping her eyes sharp for signs. Yomiko let herself trail after, and was surprised to find Nenene almost at her elbow as they turned a corner.

 

“You can't be sad about running out of books, you moron, you've got a whole country full of new ones to explore now.” Nenene chided her.

 

Yomiko shrugged, but her heart wasn't in it. She felt her cheeks pinched between thumbs and forefingers, pulled slowly outwards. When Nenene let go, she found herself laughing reflexively and ducking her head to hide the blush.

 

“That's better. I need you to be alert, just in case. You're not here for the fun of it, as much as I'd prefer that.”

 

“Yes, Sensei.”

 

They stayed at a hotel called Cecil, and Yomiko picked up a map in the lobby. They all were tired enough to agree to spend their first day taking it easy, but their hotel had turned out to be on South Main Street, and if Yomiko remembered correctly... ah, yes! They were! The Last Bookstore was only a few blocks down the road. She knew she should relax, that her legs couldn't possibly carry her down the road, let alone back with books. Perhaps she could take a taxi?

 

“You had better not be doing what I think you're doing,” Nenene grumped, “because if you are, and you two gang up on me, I will never take either of you on any holidays in developed countries again. We'll take a summer trip to a remote island, with no books, and a very light baggage allowance. Just, for today, no bookshops, okay? We can have fun tomorrow.”

 

Maggie slumped over their suitcases and let out a long sad sigh that was echoed by a pain in Yomiko's heart.

 

“That isn't fair, when we're so close to the central shopping district. There's so many things to see.”

 

“Oh come on, it's hardly Hay on Wye out there. Today we can read what we brought with us, wait for Drake to find us and check us for surveillance, have an early dinner in the cafe downstairs if it's open.”

 

Maggie looked so wrung-out tired and forlorn that Yomiko reached into her pocket in sympathy. “Here,” she said, offering the paperback she'd read on the shuttle from the airport, “let's swap for tonight, to keep our spirits up.”

 

Maggie, who by all rights in Yomiko's mind should be standoffish and sullen, smiled warmly and nodded. “Yes. I like the sound of that.” She held out one of her own to Yomiko. Hands almost meeting, a copy of _Sputnik Sweetheart_ was swapped for _Maria-sama ga Miteru_.

 

“Thank you.” Yomiko sat on one of the beds and leaned back into the pillows. She hadn't read Murakami in a while, so it would be a nice change. She'd have to buy something in English and more American themed in the morning, because it was a bit weird to travel and bring your own native books with you, she thought. It was easier to talk to new people when you were reading books they knew.

 

Nenene rolled and stretched her arms, and claimed the other bed for herself. “You two can share, you'll both be up later than me reading things anyway.”

 

Yomiko put the book down to get a good look at both of them. Had she read the situation wrong? Were they both unaware? This was not going to be a good thing, all this confusion and tension, if they were going to be living in each others pockets for the next couple of months. Yomiko never knew what to do at times like that, where the truth was felt by everyone but there was no easy rote-remembered way to bring it up in conversation. She picked the book back up, and began to read.

 

In the morning, even though The Last Bookstore wasn't open yet, Yomiko mourned that they had to go to Kinokuniya first. They hadn't even been in the country twenty-four hours, but they had an event! What kind of organising was that? Yomiko had duties, too. Maggie was acting as a body-guard, standing tall and solemn behind them, and Yomiko was sitting beside Nenene acting as translator for the questions and answers.

 

Nenene wasn't a well-known author in America, but she still drew a crowd in a city that large. A lot of kids, who looked more like 2D geeks than bibliophiles, here for the Japanese flavour of literature. Some older people, who looked like they had a quiet appreciation for some of Nenene's higher quality work. The questions reflected the demographics of the individuals.

 

“Who does the illustrations? Why don't your English editions have them?”

 

Answer, which was hard to translate without laughing when Nenene was looking ready to kick someone: “I'm not sure, actually – That's Sumiregawa, I the translator know it's Takemura Kaki – and I suppose – that's Sumiregawa again now – that the American publishers made that decision. The British and German English editions keep the pictures, and those get exported around Europe and to Australia, I think.”

 

“I love how you can keep solemnity, that sense of quietude and also frantic bubbly energy in the same characters. Do you know anyone in real life like that, or did you just imagine Kaneko up?”

 

Answer, which was hard to not frown at because of the smirk Nenene directed right at Yomiko: “Thank you, that's a real compliment! I've known one or two people who have aspects like that, but I find that in literature all the characters have to be a little exaggerated and both larger and flatter than in reality to come across as truly human, in the same way that people with the right head to shoulder-width ratio are used more often in television, because they visually fit into the screen. Kaneko does share some personal tics and habits with someone I know, but deep down inside that's all they really share, the gestures. Kaneko's emotions and motives, they're a bit too literary and literal to have any parallel out here.”

 

Yomiko pressed her fingers flat on the table and fought the urge to push her glasses up her nose, tuck her hair behind her ear, or look over her shoulder back at Maggie. All three of those gestures she shared with Kaneko, and though she'd probably already done them a dozen times before, there was a _chance_ that the questioner hadn't noticed.

 

A young man asked if there were any plans for American release of the Japanese and Chinese films and television series based on some of her books, and Yomiko's fingers of their own accord went to adjust the frames where they sat on her ears. She winced, and did not meet any of the audience's eyes. This book tour was going to be long and difficult. It already was, and it had hardly been two hours so far. There were a few more questions, then a quick break in which one of the store's employees brought them water and the crowd was arranged into a line for book signings. Yomiko would have less of a job now, because Nenene _did_ know enough English to exchange a few greetings, but she would still help with any special dedications and check for spelling errors.

 

Behind them, Maggie was stoic and silent. Yomiko had no idea what her reaction was when a tall, curvy girl in her late teens stepped forwards and introduced herself with a smile and a wink. “I'm Maggie, pleased to meet you.”

 

Maggie Anderson, Yomiko gave the girl a surname in her head, and though she knew better she looked around the room once quickly for Drake Anderson. Nenene had noticed too; she wrote the dedication out to him, and had a wider than usual smile for the girl.

 

“I'm glad to meet you, Maggie. Thank you.”

 

“Thank you, Miss Sumiregawa.”

 

Maggie Anderson wandered off, and Yomiko looked up to check the line. It was well after twelve, and it would presumably take a few more hours to get to the end of the line and then thank and sort out signing books and promotional material for the store and staff. Yomiko kept a smile on her face, but it was getting tired and all she really wanted was to flop down onto the table before her and moan loudly that she was running out of time to look at books that she _couldn't_ find back home in Tokyo.

 

When she thought she was about at breaking point, Maggie put a long-fingered hand on her shoulder. “Shall we change for a while? You should take a break, find a bathroom if you need it.”

 

Yes, a break. Space, time to breathe.

 

“Is that smart, in a place like this? Don't get distracted, or I'll send someone after you, you bibliomaniac.” Nenene pushed her none too gently, so Yomiko shifted and stood.

 

“Hehe, all right. I'll be back soon. Hang in there, sensei!”

 

Travelling, life was often a succession of strange toilet stops and uncomfortable beds. Maybe her trip with Nancy and the variety and poverty that they'd seen during it had made this American trip seem even more sterile and strange. There were small differences, like where on the floor got damp and how to politely wait while the cubicles were full. In America so far, everything was the same. The airport, the hotel, Kinokuniya. Yomiko knew it was far too early to pass judgement on the amenities of a country in one day, but she was scared that they'd get to the end of their trip and outside of the Book Expo, all she would remember was looking up and seeing her face in mirrors in public and hotel restrooms.

 

When work was over, the hours of repetition meant that the whole experience folded flat in Yomiko's memories, and she felt like she'd simply woken from a surreal dream, the kind that last a hundred years in your head and ten seconds on the clock. She was ready to head down to the street and turn back towards South Main Street, finally, but Nenene steered them left and into a ramen store.

 

“But the bookshop!”

 

Nenene shook her head sadly. “Is that all that's on your mind? Look, remember Miss Anderson saying her father liked ramen? We're just picking up Drake. What's with you today?”

 

“I have all kinds of things on my mind, I guess.”

 

Up some stairs, around a bamboo-decorated guard rail, and then there was Drake, laughing with his daughter, looking carefree. That was a good sign, right?

 

“No bugs or tails, though I'm glad I checked,” he agreed with Yomiko's inner gut feeling as they entered the store and sat down, “I don't know how much Joker told Cole, but with the people he keeps company with... there's no knowing whether he sees us as threats or not. Whether he knows about your secrets.”

 

“Hmm.” Maggie didn't seem to know what to say, but Nenene smiled broadly and leaned forwards onto the table.

 

“Well,” Nenene said, “So far we're under their radar, or they don't care enough about us. We can have some lunch before anything else.”

 

Yomiko didn't mean to sound petulant, but damnit it was something like four in the afternoon! “What about...”

 

“They're open till something like ten at night, how much time do you need there?”

 

“There's never enough time in a bookstore,” Yomiko smiled, “but I didn't know they opened that late.”

 

“Idiot. Jeeze, you're the one who got all excited when you knew we were coming here first. I guess it's good I looked up their details. So, we can relax for a bit and _then_ go.”

 

“I'm looking forward to it,” Maggie shared a smile with Yomiko, and then the conversation turned to really mundane things. Family, friends, food and television. Maggie Anderson looked a little lost, because she'd only heard of half of everyone else's shared acquaintances. When things turned towards travel and security, the girl finally spoke up.

 

“I don't see why I can't come along, Dad!”

 

She spoke in such heavily accented English even Yomiko had a bit of trouble picking out the words, but Nenene seemed to understand young Maggie's meaning from the tone of her voice. That universal whiny teenager type sound.

 

“We've talked about this. I don't take anyone with me on work trips, and even if I did, you-”

 

“But this is more friends than work, right?”

 

“Even if I did,” he continued a bit more sternly, “your school term starts next week.”

 

It seemed like school was a subject on which Drake could stand firm against his daughter. Yomiko had always thought, the way the man went on about her during missions, that he was a complete pushover. Yomiko supposed that when you were facing death, you clung to idealised images of people in your head. Not for the first time in her life, she wondered if she'd ever done that herself. If Donnie inside her memories was only a small percentage of who Donnie really had been; that she'd buried herself in fiction and lost all the flaws and normal parts of him. If in the face of his loss she'd created some imaginary perfect lover who shared her interests, who wouldn't blame her for his own death. Hmn. It was an interesting thought. Who was Yomiko – and who was Maggie Mui – in Nenene's head when they were parted? What was Nancy thinking of them in Washington, and what was happening with the two remaining Paper Sisters and Junior Makuhari back in Japan?

 

“Lots of nice, black, discreetly marked cars in a suburb like this. Let's go for a walk.” Drake shook his head at the restaurant's staff and stood, leaving a bill to cover their drinks.

 

“Have we been followed?” Nenene asked.

 

“Probably not, but it's still not the traffic I expected. Let's not hang around.”

 

Drake drove to their hotel, where there wasn't much to pack up, but enough luggage that it made the five of them in Drake's car feel a little crowded.

 

“We're checking out?” Yomiko tried not to look in the direction of where The Last Bookstore waited for her, but she knew Nenene had picked up on her yearning.

 

“Well, we agreed in advance that we wanted to keep unobtrusive until we know more about Cole's agenda. Even in the face of great books.” Nenene crossed her arms and stood firm. Yomiko could do nothing but join everyone in the car and watch with a heavy heart as they pulled away from the hotel and then South Main Street entirely. The Andersons sat in front, Nenene between Maggie and Yomiko in the back.

 

“Look, we're just going to go to the next city for the tour, anyway. We might have time to come back later, when we're done with everything.”

 

Yomiko stared out the window and tried not to be sullen, failing entirely. “It's not like they'd attack a bookstore. Abduct and scan all the books and try to raise advertising revenue from them, yes. Attack, no.”

 

“I'll forgive your pettiness and blame it on jet lag...”

 

Maggie Mui put a hand on Nenene's shoulder to stop her, then said “We'll find cheaper and rarer books in the smaller cities anyway. Where people like us are less likely to go. I'm sure.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“We'll drop past my house, okay guys?”

 

Drake drove them out of the city and into suburbia, where large chunky houses squatted surrounded by huge amounts of grass and space. Cars drove, people got out of them with bags full of objects and food, and Yomiko decided that whether you kept everything in a big house or threw it out in your apartment's burnable trash bins, shopping looked just as repetitive and boring in all countries of the world.

They were only a block away from Drake's house when they saw a Google car, camera and assorted technology mounted on top, cruising slowly down a road that intersected theirs. Drake pulled into a driveway, then back out facing towards the city, and drove. Maggie Anderson looked around, alarmed, at her father and everyone else in the car.

 

“It's probably nothing,” Nenene said in English, to reassure her, “but we should be care...”

 

“Careful,” Yomiko supplied.

 

Nenene smiled tightly and nodded. “We should be careful.”

 

Yomiko hated this part of working. All quiet but needing attention, slow and stressful and rarely leaving enough time to finish a good book.

 

“Once we know how much he knows about us, we won't have to be so careful, we'll know where the real risks lie.”

 

The motel they finally were dropped off at was smaller, cheaper, dingier and didn't ask questions. Drake headed out to drop his Maggie home, and so Yomiko, Nenene and their Maggie eyed off the double bed, single bed and trundle bed they'd paid for.

 

“I'll take this one, Drake will hardly fit on it,” Nenene said.

 

Maggie nodded and after doing some stretches she lay herself out on the double bed with the book she'd borrowed from Yomiko the night before. Yomiko pulled out her toiletries bag and shut herself in the bathroom. It was scrubbed clean but old, grouting gone all blotchy in places, spots behind the glass of the mirror. She turned the taps in the sink and the shower to see what the water was like. Once she was in the shower cubicle, she discovered a small airing window that was covered with a dark green plastic curtain. It had little bright yellow flowers all over it, and little droplets condensed on it as the water in the shower heated up, making everything sparkle. Maybe the bathrooms wouldn't all be the same, after all.


	8. The Honourable Schoolboy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junior, Anita and Michelle are becoming used to the new silences in their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still no beta, sorry for any mistakes, and please let me know if there's any glaring errors.

Only two people were gone, but the apartment was far quieter. Anita moved into Nenene and Maggie's room two days after everyone had left, and back into the room she shared with Michelle the day after that. Junior had heard it all from inside his cupboard, but he did not say anything. It seemed safer. He still was not really used to being there, which was strange. He'd lived in the apartment while Nancy travelled with Yomiko, and he hadn't felt so awkward. It wasn't like the building or the people in it were any newer or like they'd changed a lot. He just hadn't felt that he had belonged there before. Now, things were different, and it was his turn to make breakfast.

 

Well, it was Michelle's, which really meant it was his. He didn't mind, and not just because Michelle's good-natured kindness tended to leave him blushing and cursing himself for having a crush and her for just being so grown up and _wonderful_. He didn't mind because Sumiregawa had been right, and one of the only things Michelle was worse at than remembering to buy food was remembering how to cook food.

 

Anita plodded into the room while Junior was setting plates out, her eyes baggy and dark underneath. Junior had offered to help, but she didn't really seem to have any jobs he could do, yet. So he poured a tall glass of milk, put it down in front of her, and counted slices of bread to see if they had enough for the week to allow for French Toast, which was becoming one of his favourites.

 

They almost did, and almost was close enough. He started mixing things together in a bowl, thoughts drifting off into the entirely meaningless but regular postcards from Nancy. Junior picked up all the fan-mail in Nenene's absence, and nobody seemed to think anything of it, but so far all that Nancy had said had been brief, in code, and more or less along the lines of 'wait', 'I care about you', 'I know nothing new'. Things being quiet wasn't a bad thing as such, but it left Junior feeling unsettled. Things were not actually quiet, and at the very least there should have been some curiosity from Cole's staff into the anti-Google networking that Anita had been doing. It made Junior scared that they were missing very obvious things under their own noses.

 

He stared out the glass doors as he soaked the first piece of bread and began to fry it. He was just absently staring, mind turned inwards, and it was a miracle that he caught it at all. A flash of sunlight too bright, and too close. It could have been someone's watch-face in the apartments across the road, or a cup on a balcony, anything reflective, but something about it was making Junior feel very uncomfortable. He stepped back from the stove and called out to Anita.

 

“Do you remember that book Michelle lent me?”

 

Anita rubbed at her eyes and groaned. “Oh, what was it? John leCarré? Yeah, I think I read it a while back myself.”

 

Junior nodded. “I wonder if Ricki Tarr ever worked in Japan. Could you take this over? I need to use the bathroom.”

 

Anita looked concerned, but shrugged easily. “Sure. Hang on.”

 

She moved in beside him, eyebrow raised. Junior waved a hand dismissively beneath the line of the bench and escaped to the cover of the bathroom. It was only a quick step through walls to sneak out through the back-end of the apartment and into the outer hallway. Stairs. Parking basement. Sewer. Across the road and up into the other building. Where had he seen that glint, and what had it been?

 

Junior had to hurry, but he knew he'd found the right place the second he took a peek in. He didn't dare leave his head in the room, just pulled back out and went back home as fast and quietly as possible. Japanese, suited, but very obviously some kind of experienced operative. Binoculars trained on their apartment and a notebook on his knee. A quiet and observant man was a dangerous thing. Junior tried to look nonchalant and calm. He rinsed his hands so that they would look damp, just in case, and took the cooking back over from Anita. It was nearly done.

 

“Took your time, idiot. I've done it all. You'd damn well better plan on taking my turn tomorrow to make up for it.”

 

“Yeah,” Junior agreed, “and I'll _sweep_ the floor today, too.”

 

Anita picked up on the emphasis on his words, and her eyes widened. “Oh. Wow, I guess it gets, er, dusty in here. Yep. Do the housework like a good unwanted guest, I've got important things to do today.”

 

Anita was not very good at faking her normal behaviour, but Junior didn't think that it would matter. If people had been able to bug the apartment, they wouldn't have left someone watching them in such an obvious place. He finished what there was left to do, and carried the serving plate to the table. Michelle arrived as soon as there were no jobs left, some secret skill of hers. She helped make the morning seem almost normal, exclaiming in glee over the food and serving herself a generous plateful.

 

“Ah, today's going to be great!” Michelle smiled broadly at both Anita and Junior, and Junior had to look down or risk blushing bright red.

 

He wasn't quite sure what to do with all the attention. He'd never been that close to other humans, and Michelle was so full of all the light fluffy stereotypically cute girl things that he forgot how she could turn silent and solemn in a second.

 

“I suppose so...” Junior mumbled, knowing that whatever he said would be wrong in this kind of situation.

 

Anita hmphed and served herself. “It's going to be today. Man, Michelle, why do you always have such unrealistic expectations? You'll only upset the help.”

 

Junior couldn't keep the indignation from his voice. “Hey, I'm more than that, at least! If you want to talk down to me, pay me a salary.”

 

Anita rolled her eyes, and ignored him.

 

“Oh.” Michelle lifted something she'd been reading off the table, and Junior recognised it immediately. A postcard.

 

“You should read this, Junior.” Michelle stretched across the table, the only sign she was surprised by the postcard was the tightness in the corners of her smile. “I picked it up on my way to the table, with the other mail, but I think it's for you.”

 

Junior looked down at it. It was in a large, loopy messy scrawl, and in English, postmarked Washington, DC. All it said was their address and the words,

 

_Rich man, poor man, beggarman_ . Words from the children's rhyme that was used to make up code-names in the book he'd been reading. It couldn't be anyone but Nancy, and that meant, maybe, that it couldn't be anyone but President Cole's influence behind the surveillance of their apartment. At least, he supposed. It made sense, but then again he'd been reading a spy novel and discovered someone actually was monitoring his apartment. Maybe he was getting a bit too paranoid? No, it had to be Nancy, had to be a warning to him, and a message that President Cole's office was taking them very seriously indeed.

 

Junior couldn't swallow around the bite he'd taken, so he clenched his jaw shut and handed the postcard over to Anita without a word.

 

“Hmm.” Anita stretched her neck left, then right. “Bit late, isn't it?”

 

“Anita,” Michelle chided, “we should respect the postal service, they have provided a lot of paper in times of great need for us.”

 

“I think it could only have arrived just in time, anyway,” Junior didn't want to explain any further, but he knew Anita would figure it out. It wasn't a warning that spies were headed their way, but that they'd been there a long time and were common knowledge wherever Nancy was. To the point that Nancy knew what book Junior had been reading that week. But, that the Americans hadn't quite yet, for whatever reason, stared investigating their post. Maybe there had only been surveillance photographs, maybe Nancy was the only one to have noticed what Junior had been reading.

 

“Let's not get caught up in this kind of thing. You guys are ruining my happy delicious breakfast!” Michelle sighed, and waved her fork about in the air.

 

Anita caught Junior's eye and made an exasperated face at him. He simply set about eating, which was a long and annoying chore. It wasn't fair. He'd gone to all the effort for this, and now it did not even taste sweet. If you'd asked him the day before, he'd have been certain that he'd have been able to go right back to the life he'd had before. He wouldn't have enjoyed it, but he thought he'd had the strength inside himself to suppress those feelings of boredom, loneliness, being used. Watching Michelle enjoy her breakfast as if there was nothing wrong in the world, Junior knew he could never go back to that. He had only survived it because he'd never known anything else.

 

He pushed his plate towards Michelle. “I'm not hungry.”

 

“Ah, more for me then, thank you Junior!” Michelle took his food happily.

 

Anita kicked Junior under the table. “Stop being a jerk. Just sit and eat, get over yourself.”

 

Junior shook his head. “I'm going to lie down. I'll be back later.”

 

He pushed his plate across to Maggie, stood up, and cleaned his hands. He retreated to his tiny room and curled up on the blankets. He stared at the wall, and the patterns of light that the gaps between the sliding shelves made.

 

After what felt like a very long time, hearing Anita and Michelle chatter, their cutlery bustle through breakfast, there was the sound of the tap running. They washed up. There was silence, then footsteps. Someone sat down outside his room.

 

“Hey,” it was Anita, calling out from the other side, “you okay?”

 

Junior didn't answer. It was too quiet in the apartment, and there were whispers at the back of his mind that left him feeling scared and sweaty and lost. Not himself.

 

“Well be that way, fine. I just see your eyes sometimes, and I think, if that geezer left some loose threads floating around in my head, maybe it happened to you too. You know?”

 

Junior knew exactly what she met. He slid the door open, eyes wide. “You too?”

 

Anita nodded. She lifted a finger to her lips. “Don't tell Michelle, okay? She worries too much. We'll never be allowed to do anything if she thinks we're sick from it or something.”

 

Anita crouched in the opening, so Junior squished back to make room for her. Anita slid the door shut, and they were in a secret kind of darkness together. It was strangely comfortable. He could feel Anita's elbow bumping up against his own.

 

“I like the dark more, it's better than hearing the words when I'm out in the sunlight.”

 

Anita shrugged. “I don't get it like that. It's more like, I make connections and know things I'm not sure I have any business knowing. He says things? What things?”

 

Junior shook his head. “I don't know. I never remember when I hear them. It's like... like someone having a conversation in a language I don't understand, across a large and busy room. Sometimes there are more esses, and those hiss around behind my ears like static.”

 

“Hmmm? Weird. Wish I could hear it too.”

 

“No, you don't.” Junior shrugged and picked at his pillowcase. “You really don't.”

 

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, and Junior wondered if it was what it could have been like, to have a real sister in your life, when Anita ruined it all.

 

“Why the hell do you have to keep ogling Michelle, anyway?”

 

Junior did not know what to make of that. “Ogling? What are you on about?”

 

“You know, looking at her tits all the time.”

 

Junior felt his face heat up. Had be been that obvious? Really? He wished he could get away with sinking through the floor, but there was an apartment beneath them, and Anita would really give him hell for it later.

 

“U-um. I have a reason for that.”

 

Anita scoffed. “You mean, besides being an utter lewd pervert?”

 

“No, no really!” Junior gathered his courage. He'd have to say it sometime, now. No escaping it. “I just... I was never nursed. I don't understand it. And when I saw Michelle the first time, I thought, maybe... I knew I had no proper mother to speak of, but that maybe as a construct like me, she looked like what my mother might. Somehow I can't look at Nancy that way now, it's too weird.”

 

Anita was silent in the darkness. “Whaaaat?!” She didn't say anything more, and Junior didn't feel brave enough to try and guess how to answer.

 

“I don't mean to leer or anything creepy. Still. Sorry.”

 

“No, really, what? What on earth? I never thought anything like that in my life, you weirdo! Yuck. Most people don't remember that because they were _babies_ , not because it never happened to them. Even if you'd been nursed like that, you wouldn't know. Yuck.”

 

Anita slid the panel so that the small room was open. She leaned out and took a deep breath. “Ahh. I have to get out of here. It's too stifling in there with all your problems. But if you hear any whole words, tell me? Even if they don't make sense.”

 

Junior nodded. “I promise.”

 

“Freak.” Anita nodded back, and shut the panel behind herself.

 

Junior stared at the wall in the dark for a while. It was shameful, and it wasn't just about curiosity. He'd been behaving in a way that was inappropriate, inexcusable. He felt awful. He'd try to stop doing it, no, he _would_ stop doing it. But he couldn't really apologise to Michelle, could he? Did she even know? He had no idea.

 

He realised he'd lost the opportunity to ask Anita more about her experience of Gentlemen's thoughts, and sighed. He lay down and pulled the blanket over his head, so that he was separated from the rest of the world by several layers. Clothing, sheets, blanket, walls, the outer apartment walls, the walls of the building. The poles in the street, and the walls of the building across the street, and the insulation and walls of the apartment from which they were being watched. It wasn't enough to feel safe. He wanted to get out. His entire body said _get out_. His mind. His heart. He suppressed a shiver and curled tighter into a ball.

 

When the panel opened again, he thought it would be Michelle, but instead it was Anita. “Oh. Well, um, here. Sorry I chewed you out like that. You've got enough of a brain to know what's right and wrong anyway.”

 

When Anita patted his head it wasn't gentle like Michelle's hand, or tentative like Nancy's. A little clumsy, a little too heavy, but warm. Someone like him. He poked his head out and looked at her in the dim light. She had a funny look on her face, like someone had just presented her with a very complicated puzzle.

 

“Look, we'd better enrol you in school sometime. And it looks like I can't do as much stuff today as I'd had planned. I'll get someone else to print out the stuff tomorrow, so it's not all going through my computer.”

 

“All right?” he said.

 

“Anyway, get up. Michelle said when I was done grovelling in apology we'd go out for ice cream. Come on.”

 

Junior frowned. Ice cream? They'd only just had breakfast, really. Anita looked pretty grumpy, so he got up and grabbed a jacket, promising himself that he'd turn any offers of sweets down once they were on the street and Anita was out of arm's reach.

 

“I'm ready,” he said. As always, he stood waiting at the front door in his shoes for a good five minutes while the other two bickered and changed their minds over socks and remembered they'd forgotten their keys.

 

“So I thought it was a nice day for a walk in the park,” Michelle explained when they were in the lift.

 

“It's going to rain,” Anita said, “saw it when I was watching the news.”

 

“There aren't any parks in the area,” Junior said, “unless you mean the children's playground.”

 

Michelle pouted and sighed. “You're both way too curmudgeonly for your own good.”

 

“Yeah, it's not good for us, we just do it all for you. Get over yourself,” Anita sounded grumbly, but Junior caught a glimpse of a smile as they stepped out on the ground floor.

 

“Do you always disrespect your elders?” Junior asked her, as they followed Michelle down the footpath.

 

Anita shrugged. “I'm not sure she's even my elder. And you might be older than us, that part of things never made sense to me. With all the files in my head, all the experiments and copies...”

 

“I think you were first,” Junior said. “Wendy seemed to think so, and she'd know. Dokusensha stole the genetic samples years before I was conceived. You might have been made after Nancy, but there's no way you're younger than me.”

 

“So,” Anita said, grinning. “Who's disrespecting their elders, huh?”

 

Junior stood there, blinking. “Wait, did you get into all of that just to...”

 

“Here, sweeties!” Michelle ran back to them, carrying three bright pink strawberry ice creams, the sort you got from a vending machine. Why would a vending machine have summer things like ice creams, though? Junior was pretty sure they all had hot drinks on their street in winter and spring, but he must have been wrong.

 

“Uh, I... thanks.” Junior took his time unwrapping it. “So, I'm guessing you wanted to talk?”

 

Anita looked around in an entirely obvious and suspicious way. Some days, Junior missed working alone.

 

“Yeah, okay,” Anita said, “so do we take him out? Just one guy, we can do it easily.”

 

“We could leave him, feed him information? Or just watch him, if his behaviour changes we'll know there's something going on,” Michelle suggested.

 

Junior took a bite of his ice cream to avoid having to answer.

 

“What, and then what?!” Anita's face was flushed with fury. “Am I supposed to just stop what I'm doing? I have important work to do!”

 

Michelle sighed. “Anita, dearest, he's been watching us for more than long enough to have seen it already...”

 

“Crap. Yeah. All right. So we just pretend nothing's happened? I can't live like that!”

 

“Hmn.” Junior said. They all kept walking, eating their ice creams and huddling closer together, whether it was to keep out the cold breeze that kept sweeping past them or just to earn a little extra space between their bodies and those of strangers, Junior couldn't have said. A bit of both, really.

 

Junior saw it first, but it was Michelle who acted. A magazine, knocked off of a display rack, blown towards a puddly fate. Michelle lunged forwards, reached out her arm, and managed with the brush of a fingertip to connect with the paper, bring it back up into the air. Held it safely in her hand.

 

Michelle recovered upright, cleared her throat, and placed the magazine back on the rack. “Oh my, what passes for excitement in our lives these days.”

 

Anita and Junior caught up to her with a few strides and it was hard to keep from laughing. Anita was giggling, Michelle was blushing and looking down at her feet. To think, they'd gone from life and death, intrigue and spies, to the sudden and immediate urgency of... Junior craned his neck to read the title around Anita's shoulder. The sudden and immediate urgency of _Pichi Lemon_.

 

Michelle choked back a laugh, and then they were standing there, the three of them, half-eaten ice creams dripping and their shoulders shaking. Junior wasn't sure he'd ever been in a situation like that before, where there was so much noise coming out of his own ribcage. It felt like he'd sneezed, or maybe like a too-tight muscle had suddenly loosened, and his entire body felt lighter. Every sensation felt more intense, especially the stickiness that had run over the back of his hand.

 

“I think,” Junior said, “you need to re-open your agency, before you get bored enough to start saving newspapers from commuters' careless hands.”

 

“No way, jerk-face,” Anita said sourly, “ _we_ need to re-open the agency.”

 

Michelle's smile was so sunny it made you feel warm inside, and if Anita knew what Junior was thinking, he knew she'd have whispered something in his ear, like _see what happens when you keep your eyes where they're supposed to be, pervert?_

 

“The Three Paper Sisters Detective Agency, open for business! What an idea! We had our respite, but we're ready for work again!” Michelle flounced.

 

“I, er, I'm not a paper user, though...” Junior said with concern.

 

“You're not our sister either, weirdo. And what, you think we're going to kick Maggie out in favour of you just because she's travelling? Not a chance. You're our substitute.”

 

“Maybe we could call it _Four_ , at least as long as Junior's helping us.”

 

Anita groaned and waved her hands in the air. “But he's still not a girl!”

 

Michelle smiled sweetly. “Junior doesn't mind, do you, Junior?”

 

Junior decided that keeping his silence would be better than any answer he could come up with.


	9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone! I have sat on these chapters for a while while I've been finishing uni and jobseeking, and I've been proud of them and disappointed with them and I've felt too scared to post them. But, looking back, some of my beta-ed chapters early on have glaring errors, and I care about this story, and I want to push on and finish it. So I'll post these today, and keep working on the next few, and we're going to start meeting villains and seeing the plot develop. I can't believe I took a year to post these. I'm so sorry, and I hope that if anyone is still reading and following, they were worth the wait.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and just for being fans of such bookish and wonderful characters. I'm always sad the fandom is as small as it is, so I really value every single review and every single hit. It says I'm not alone, and that the show (or books or manga) are getting the love they deserve.
> 
> Other note: I based Inuzuka and Aboshi on my interest in the Nanso Satomi Hakkenden novels and ukiyo-e, and having seen a Geneon series of The Hakkenden. I have no familiarity with the recent anime series.
> 
> Enough ranting, and on with the story!

It was easy to feel out of control. She'd spent so long relying on Maggie's quiet but humbling intuition for things, and on Nenene's pragmatic bossiness. Anita was so big now, even Michelle's height and age advantage weren't enough to enforce any kind of order. Oh, she'd been so cute when she'd been a short, grumpy kid. The kind you teased just to make her grizzle at you. The kind who took years to get used to the idea of taking a hug for herself instead of waiting for you to give one to her...

 

“Anita, don't stay up there all day! We've got a business to run, you know!”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Anita grumbled. “and the second we actually have a job, I'll _be_ there. Until then I've got work to do.”

 

Michelle got up from the couch and bounced up the stairs to their shared room. “Oh? What kind? Is it the kind that you need wise advice from a big sister type?”

 

Michelle had been reaching over Anita's shoulder for the mouse. Anita blocked her with her arm and waved her away. “It's the kind that needs silence, patience, and a sense of responsibility.”

 

“Hmn,” Michelle pouted. “Well isn't that _dull_.”

 

Anita sighed heavily, and pushed herself back from the desk. “You can't have run out of books to read. What's wrong?”

 

Michelle shrugged one shoulder. She trailed a finger along the edge of Anita's desk, looking at the irregularities in the grain of the wood. “Oh, this and that,” she said absently. “Mostly I'm feeling guilty. You see, the younger most darling sister I should be protecting, she's treating me like some kind of useless child.”

 

Anita snorted. “When it looks like a rock, and sounds like a rock, it's a...”

 

“Anita,” she scolded. She hadn't meant to sound so upset. Michelle shook her head and brushed a hand back over Anita's hair, smoothing some of the messy bits down flat. “Sorry. I just worry about you. You work too hard. You've got others who help you, you know? You don't have to do it all in one day. Breathe a little, dear.”

 

Anita nodded once. She looked down at her feet. “We didn't figure things out fast enough last time. I want to be ahead of the game. I want to _get_ these people, for what they're doing.”

 

Anita took Michelle's arm, pulled it around her shoulders. Michelle leaned in, wrapping her up in a hug. “I know. I do, too. Usually I enjoy having the couch to myself. Or ordering food in more often. I hate how this is ruining everything I love.”

 

“They can't ruin books for us,” Anita said fiercely. “We won't let em.”

 

Michelle sighed. “Yes. But can you take a day off, please? Someone else can translate, and you can help me look for other work if you like. We could go out. You could invite Hisami.”

 

Anita smiled, but tightly. Michelle began to worry. Was something the matter with Hisami?

 

“If I saw her, I'd just rant and be grumpy. What a waste of time!”

 

Michelle couldn't do much, other than hold Anita tightly for another minute, and leave her to it. You couldn't really force it, not without robbing them of the chance to learn for themselves. Kids.

 

Junior was busy in the kitchen, re-organising the shelves. Michelle wasn't quite sure why he'd taken a keen interest in groceries and organisation, but she wasn't one to complain. “Junior, don't you have homework? A new friend from school to invite over?”

 

“I've finished all my homework,” Junior said flatly. He smiled, briefly, and went back to sliding tins of food around.

 

Michelle flopped down on the lounge and let her wrists dangle listlessly over the back of the cushions. She ran through ideas in her head. Distractions. She'd drive the kids mad if she kept worrying about them. Maybe she should read something really depressing, like a Mishima Yukio novel. Or something that demanded your attention. A classic. _The Tale of Genji_? No, dull. She'd been reading Japanese literature all week. What about French? What about, hmmm. What about, no! German! Ende! _Neverending Story_.

 

She was so caught up in making the decision that she only realised the phone was ringing after the fact. She leaped for it, and hit the buttons to recall the number of the last received call. The call connected. She heard someone's voice in her ear.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hello? I'm returning a call,” Michelle said.

 

“Oh, is this the Three Paper Sisters Detective Agency?”

 

Michelle nearly fell onto the floor, but she caught herself just in time. “Yes, yes it is!”

 

“Oh, thank goodness. I've heard you're the people I need to call. Something's been taken, and I need some help getting it back.”

 

She nodded, and fumbled for a notepad and a pen on the low table. “A book, you say?”

 

“No, not a book,” the client said reluctantly.

 

“Oh, I'm terribly sorry. We specialise in books. When you said you'd heard of us, I assumed-”

 

“It's a wood-block,” he said urgently. “An Ukiyo-e wood-block. I know just who's taken it, too.”

 

“A wood-block,” Michelle repeated. “Not the print, but the wood itself? Just the one?”

 

“Just the one,” the client confirmed. “Though you're right in your suspicions, it's from a set used to create the one picture. It's got a very high value, though it has more value within the set.”

 

“A famous artist, then?” Michelle scribbled notes. “I'll do as much research as I can, and let's set up a meeting to discuss the particulars, and our rate of payment.”

 

The second she had work, something snapped back into place inside her. She was in control, in charge. She knew that Anita and Junior wouldn't resist her directions unless they had a reason to. There was trust, solidarity, and a sense of respect. After she'd ironed out the details with the client, she ran upstairs to get Anita.

 

They were professional looking, Michelle thought, dressed neatly and sitting seiza on the carpet in a modern apartment. They were the kind of people you'd trust to get the job done. The apartment was expensive and new, Western style floors and carpeting, but you could tell from the furniture choices and decoration that this family was very conservative and traditional. She kept feeling that they were actually supposed to be in a traditional house, smelling a little damp and warm with mould. The fresh smell of new Tatami over the top of that, and the smoky smell of a fire pit in the kitchen. She blinked, and focused on the clean, white carpet beneath her legs.

 

The client, a young man, bowed forwards. “I am glad you have come,” he said, very formally. “My name is Inuzuka, and I am humbly offering compensation for the retrieval of a missing wood-block from an illustration of the _Nanso Satomi Hakkenden_ , The Chronicles of the Eight Dog Warriors.”

 

Michelle nearly swallowed her own tongue trying not to laugh. “Ah,” she said. The glare that Anita gave her let her know she hadn't got away with it.

 

“No, no, it's quite all right,” Inuzuka said. “I do get that a lot, being a collector. I do have a connection, though it's not the one you'd imagine. I am, you see, the descendant of Yanagawa Shigenobu.”

 

Michelle had seen that name written in the books she'd been reading recently. She hadn't made it through the entire series, but she'd enjoyed some of the novels. Yanagawa Shigenobu had been the original illustrator.

 

“I see you recognise the name,” Inuzuka said, inclining his head.

 

“Bah,” Anita said.

 

“Interesting,” Junior said.

 

“That means you're related to Hokusai too, right?” Michelle was leaning forwards despite herself, interested. She always made this mistake, getting a little too caught up in the books themselves.

 

He shrugged. “It is hard to say. My mother has all the documents, but there is also the chance that my family has been lying to gain prestige. Regardless, I have an interest in Yanagawa's art, and so I have been collecting and adding to my family's collection. Prints, early edition novels, and yes even some of the wood-blocks used to create the images.”

 

Anita scoffed. “Sounds pretentious. So, who was the thief? Another person like you, with delusions of grand ancestry?”

 

“Anita!” Michelle was aghast. An attitude like that could cost them the first job they'd had in months. “Don't listen to a thing she says,” Michelle pressed a finger to Anita's lips and ignored the indignant fire in the girl's eyes. “She's always going off like that. Ahahaha!”

 

“No, it's a valid question,” Inuzuka said calmly. “I believe the thieves to be none other than the descendants of Bakin, the author.”

 

“Huh?” Michelle frowned. “But, why?”  
  


“Well,” Inuzuka said. “Hokusai was the original illustrator, until he had an argument with Bakin. Bakin employed Hokusai's son-in-law, Yanagawa, as illustrator. I suppose Bakin's descendants see it as a crime, where Hokusai's descendants hold a wood-print made by Yanagawa for Bakin's novels.”

 

“But... you can't even be from the main family, can you?” Junior frowned. “You must be very indirect descendants...”

 

“Yes,” Inuzuka sighed. “It's all very messy. On the other hand, I can provide you with an address and a guarantee that the wood-block will be there. I can show you the print, and the others in the set, you can see for yourselves that it belongs here.”

 

“This is messy,” Anita muttered to Michelle as they followed Inuzuka down the hall.

 

Michelle shrugged. “Isn't it kind of cool? Actually seeking out a wood-block print, working for a descendant of an illustrator to a novel I've just read, _and_ his surname is more or less the name of a Dog Warrior? It's wonderful!”

 

“Yes, well,” Junior said, “be careful. This could be a trap.”

 

Michelle's heart skipped a beat. “No way, nobody would go this far, not even the Americans.”

 

“Wood isn't paper,” Anita said glumy, “I hate that wood doesn't count. What's with that?”

 

“Are you still with me,” Inuzuka called back to them.

 

“We're all behind you,” Michelle replied. She cast a sharp glare to Junior, who was peering into the poor man's bathroom, and ushered the kids down the hall. “Here we are!”

 

“Keep in mind,” Inuzuka said, “this wasn't designed for a novel. It was full colour, brocade style, for an art book.”

 

Michelle couldn't put her finger on it, but something seemed off. She wasn't an ukiyo-e expert, however it felt very unlikely that Yanagawa had ever created a full-colour brocade style art relating to the Hakkenden novels. Yanagawa was most famous for his erotic imagery, not the Hakkenden illustrations. But, there it was. A beautiful image showing the eight dog warriors together, their poses reflecting their natures. Stylised, painstaking, breathtaking.

 

“Looks like it took way more time to make than it's worth,” Anita said. “Like everything did back then.”

 

Inuzuka laughed awkwardly. “Well, that's true. However, I think the effort and artistry, the control and perseverance needed to create such a thing, that is truly marvellous.”

 

“I like it,” Junior said.

 

“Does this mean you'll take the job?” Inuzuka rubbed his hands together nervously.

 

“We'll have to estimate how much effort it'll be first, might not be worth it.” Anita twisted her mouth, as she got ready to describe their payment criteria. Junior looked around the room.

 

Michelle stared at the picture. Something was off. Something in the picture? Or about the job on the whole. Something mattered, and it was niggling at her. She couldn't figure it out.

 

“...so, that's a plan, then.” Anita tugged at her elbow. “Come on, Mrs. Responsible Adult. Time to go and do some actual work now.”

 

Inuzuka smiled as he saw them to the door. “Thank you so much! I'm counting on you.”

 

When the door was shut behind them, Anita rolled her eyes. “Jeeze, what a polite way to put the pressure on us. We don't even know if it's possible yet, he didn't give us any information.”

 

Michelle nodded, frowning. “Well, let's do what research we can, before we send Junior in for reconnaissance. Even if we have an address, I don't want to jump right in.”

 

The address was in the suburbs, which made it harder to lurk around. They walked past a couple of times, but they didn't get much from just that. Sitting in an internet cafe near a train station, they had no luck looking up either Inuzuka's lineage, or the Bakin family. Were they all fake names? The rising bad feeling came back, and Michelle was of half a mind to stalk back to that apartment and reject the job, when Junior raised a hand. Anita and Michelle clustered around his PC screen, reading over his shoulder. He read it out loud for their benefit, just in case.

 

“That address and phone number, a reverse search in the phone book says that it isn't anybody by any of the names we've put on our list. It's someone called Aboshi.”

 

Michelle gasped. She put a hand to her lips. “Snake-like, manipulative, deceitful Aboshi?!”

 

“You know this jerk?!” Anita threw her hands up in the air. “What's his problem?”

 

“No, I don't know him. I've _read_ about him. He's a villain in the novels. The Nanso Satomi Hakkenden novels, the ones that print is related to.”

 

“Do you think,” Junior speculated, “that Inuzuka is also...?”

 

“Wait, you mean they're I-jin?” Anita whispered it, but it felt like she'd screamed. They all froze where they were, arrested by that chilling thought.

 

“Is this part of their surveillance?” Michelle asked. “Junior, can you describe the man from that apartment again?”

 

“Older, a bit scarred. Sunglasses. Wearing a pretty nondescript suit. You'd mistake him for a salaryman who was a little worse for wear, or a normal yakuza thug, if he put on the attitude.”

 

“Nothing like any of them. Why is this so complicated? Ohhhhh!” Michelle clenched her fists to stop herself clutching at the kids. She was in charge, she had to put on a brave face.

 

“Well, here's what we do, then. We've all faced danger of this level before. We know to be careful, and that's what we're going to do. We'll investigate Aboshi, and Murasame, which I'm assuming is what Inuzuka really wants us to get.”

 

“Murasame?!” Anita's brow furrowed in confusion. “The legendary sword?”

 

“In the story, Aboshi steals Murasame from one of the warriors. I'm assuming the print is a ruse, and Inuzuka will just happen to have a second job for us. If we can get Murasame to begin with, and we confront Inuzuka, we'll have a good bargaining chip. But we might alert America to our activity.”

 

Anita thought about it. Junior closed his eyes for a moment, then set about deleting his browser history.

 

“If we don't take anything, we don't get any money, _and_ we risk exposing ourselves,” Anita said.

 

“They might already know. Inuzuka might be in on it. This could be a test of our strength, or a diversion from something that's happening somewhere else.” Junior said.

 

“We didn't bring any communications gear,” Michelle lamented. “What I'd give for earpieces and mics.”

 

Anita nodded decisively. “We go back, we confront Inuzuka. Pretend it's just a normal job, and we aren't capable of going up against this Aboshi. If he's honest with us, we luck out. If he isn't, at least we don't give them much information at all.”

 

“Ugh, every way, we lose,” Michelle groaned. “All right. We go back.”

 

They knocked, and waited, their resolution and their fear fading in the well lit modern corridor. When Inuzuka opened it, his face fell.

 

“You can't do the job?”

 

“Aboshi,” Michelle snarled at him. “You hired us because of our reputation, but we only work with clients who give us the information we need to complete the job. Aboshi?!”

 

He raised his hands, in self-defence, and swallowed tightly. “I didn't think anyone would believe me. I don't even know how we got here! Just, nothing, and then one day, I'm living in this strange future. I don't know where everyone else is, and Aboshi himself is alive and well and using my grocery store!”

 

Michelle elbowed her way into the entrance hall, and Anita and Junior followed behind her. “You don't know? You're the _real_ Inuzuka, aren't you? You're one of us, aren't you?”

 

“O-one of you?!”

 

“I-jin,” Michelle said. “Clones fabricated from DNA, with fake memories based on popular film and literature. Most memories involve specialist training, or an awareness of the organisation that created you.”

 

With the memories of Inuzuka from the Nanso Satomi Hakkenden novels, he had 'seen' stranger and more horrifying things than that, Michelle knew. He barely shook, though Michelle could see a hesitancy in his step as he led them into his living room. Perhaps she had read some of his characterisation wrong, or perhaps for I-jin, that original spark of personality was just that, a start. Something that wasn't the sum total of your self.

 

“It explains a lot,” he said. Sweat on his forehead, and stiffness in his spine. “I have never felt fully complete. Not all here. Lacking something. I only truly know five people in this world, the three of you, Aboshi, and an actor.”

 

“Actor?” Michelle felt a shiver down her spine. She ignored it. “No, sorry, go back. I'm trying to understand. You really never knew. I wonder if that was deliberate, or a mistake. You don't remember being anywhere other than Japan? Not England, America, or China?”

 

“Only Japan,” he agreed, shaking his head.

 

Junior looked terrified. Michelle didn't need a second to understand what was wrong. Nancy, and her mental injuries. Her inability to raise her own son. Michelle put a hand on his shoulder. He had grown too close to her, or maybe he was simply growing into his age. He scowled at her, and turned his head away. She missed the days he would let her comfort him.

 

Anita scoffed at him, and crossed her arms. “Answer her,” she said to Inuzuka.

 

“Nowhere other than here,” Inuzuka agreed with them. “You said I was a special person?”

 

“Huh? Oh, I suppose that is the word for it. I didn't think that one was as old as you were, though. No, I-jin means something else. I think it's just a convenient label. If we'd been made in Germany, at the right time, we'd have been called Aryan. I imagine the Americans have a different name for our kind. We're just designer operatives. Which is why it's so strange. Why create an operative who does nothing?”

 

Inuzuka shrugged.

 

Anita shared a look with Michelle that meant, 'Later, we can't talk about this now.'

 

“We may have a conflict of interest,” Michelle said slowly. “We're not saying no outright, but we have to confirm we're not going to be taking on something that is against our interests. You understand.”

 

Inuzuka inclined his head, smiled politely. Michelle felt like she was seeing the brave face a true warrior layered over his stress and fear. She'd always thought it was romantic, but really it was a little irritating. It didn't hide the truth. Obnoxiously noble. She wanted to stick her tongue out. Instead, she smiled back.

 

“So,” she said as sweetly as she could. “Your actor friend? We'll need to know his name, if we're to consider your case. You understand.”

 

“I...” he hesitated, glanced down the hallway to his collection room, and sighed. “For Murasame, and my duty. His name is Takeshi Kitano.”

 

Michelle, having the name she had, and having Anita and Maggie for sisters, had been expecting something ostentatious, but not as out-there as all that. A salaryman who could pass for yakuza with the right attitude? She'd have to have a talk with Junior, about describing people. Scars, in particular. Hadn't Wendy trained him? She'd send Wendy a very eloquent letter on the subject, let her know just what she thought of her educational skills. Perhaps she'd simply have to have a movie night with Junior. Catch him up on everything he was ignorant of, so mistakes like this didn't happen again.

 

“Takehsi Kitano?” Junior said, questioningly. Michelle could hear the disappointment and regret in his voice.

 

“Uncultured brat,” Anita said. “Don't you know _anything?_ ”

 

Michelle held a hand up. “Don't make me parent you, children.”

 

“You know this man, then?” Inuzuka folded his hands in his lap, and inclined his head politely, hopefully.

 

“No,” Michelle said. “We know of him. You are from a novel, but Anita and myself, we have come from actresses, from films. Takeshi Kitano is similar. I only hope they based him off the actor, and not any of his common characters. He often plays incredibly violent roles. Cruel and vicious.”

 

“Well. He seemed quite unfathomable when I met him. It was only very briefly.”

 

“Only very briefly,” Anita muttered. “Just when, and why, did you meet him?”

 

Inuzuka closed his eyes, and shook his head. “When I woke up here, his name and phone number were written on a piece of paper, left on the bench over there. I didn't know what else to do. When he came over, he was... abrupt. He described how to use bank cards. He told me to find something to do with myself. He left.”

 

Junior put a hand on Michelle's arm. He glanced at the door. “We're leaving, now,” he said gently. “Anita.”

 

He reached out, and Anita took his hand.

 

“Please, Mr. Inuzuka, do not tell them how we left the building,” he said, and bowed his head politely, before he took them through the floor.

 

Junior's power wasn't one that Michelle easily understood. Paper and that deep, emotional connection? That made sense, somehow. Being able to shift and slide through solid physical objects, that seemed impossible. She tried not to think about it. She didn't feel very different at all. Tingly, floaty. That could just have been the speed with which they plummeted. She kept her mouth shut firmly, scared she'd somehow bite her own tongue, and felt breathless from the rush of air past her nostrils.

 

They landed hard and heavy in the basement car-park. Junior was up and running, Anita wasn't too far behind. Michelle had to rub the small of her back and stagger after them. She managed to get over the pain of that final bump against concrete by the time she reached the ramp out, and by then Junior was holding up a hand, Anita was using a newspaper stand to create a diversion, and Michelle was wondering why she was even there. She wasn't very useful. Still, she readied her bow. She flung paper out to cover the reflective mirrors on corner. She covered their backs as Junior slipped through metal and glass and plastic, and somehow started a car. She shoved Anita in, and threw herself in. She didn't question the choice Junior had made, or look back. Her heart was beating, too fast, in her chest.

 

“We don't have any way to contact them,” she said. “Not securely. Not when they're in America. Their government can justify intercepting those things, and President Cole has surely given them an excuse to do so.”

 

“We have a way,” Anita said, bitterly. “And it's camped out in the apartment block right across the street.”

 

“We'll have to dump the car first,” Junior said, “But I don't think Michelle wanted to get in touch with Nancy. I don't think she trusts her.”

 

Michelle opened her mouth, wanted to say that of course she trusted Nancy, but she didn't have the heart to lie to Junior. “I don't have any reason to believe she'd betray Yomiko or Junior,” she said.

 

“Yeah, well. We've been there, done that before. All they need is the right leverage against a person.”

 

“We should have taken him,” Michelle said. “Inuzuka. He seemed so innocent. Aboshi's awful, I just know it.”

 

“He could be a sleeper agent,” Junior said flatly. “Too risky. We get out, here.”

 

He pulled into a place in a parking lot, and yanked on the handbrake. They stepped out into a quiet and dark place, full of empty cars and neon lights. They were maybe a street or two away from the business district, and none of the owners would come for their cars until at least eight at night.

 

They walked to the train station in silence, and didn't say much once they got home. Michelle made tea, Anita boiled water on the stove and poured it over instant noodles. Junior kept catching himself glancing out the window.

 

Michelle drew the curtains and switched all the lights on. It was growing so dark outside that it was pointless to even try. That left Junior pacing slowly, eyes darting this way and that. He was thinking, worrying, building up to something.

 

“We should call someone,” Junior said, as they ate dinner.

 

“We can't, you idiot.” Anita kicked him under the table, but Junior just rolled his eyes at her.

 

“You know, I think we should all just move on and look forwards to the _next_ job,” Michelle said brightly.

 

“Wendy,” Junior said. “She'd know.”

 

“We don't have any use for that manipulative bitch,” Anita spat vengefully.

 

Junior looked a little taken aback, but he nodded. “No. But we know she went to take care of Joker. They're probably insulated from this whole thing. They worked closely on the project in the past. If we had any questions, she could...”

 

“We can think it over and try it in the morning,” Michelle said. She leaned in, and whispered. “You're sure you swept for bugs? That we can talk safely?”

 

“Yes,” Junior said. He turned his face away, and Anita smirked.

 

Michelle decided to ignore whatever that had been about, and faced her meal. Her heart wasn't really in it. She was worried about Inuzuka. It seemed, more than anything else, that he was a discarded mistake, a test gone wrong in America. Or maybe he was a plant. But then, all those years ago, when she and Maggie and found Anita, that had been orchestrated. Forced. Planned. That hadn't made her need any less. It hadn't changed who they became to each other.

 

“Do it,” Anita said, suddenly. “Go out, find a payphone. Do it. You'll probably get answers when we wouldn't get anything. I don't like it, but you have to do it.”

 

Junior nodded, said “Thank you,” and left through the front door. They sat there, noodles going soggy and broth going cold, waiting. After a while they started cleaning up, and after that they slumped around the living room aimlessly. Itchy and uncomfortable.

 

“Shoulda gone with him,” Anita said grumpily. “He can handle it himself, but I don't like it. I'd have gone for the company, if it'd been you or Maggie.”

 

“Nonsense. And we wouldn't have gone, we'd have sent you out, you know we've done that before.”

 

“Pah,” Anita said. She crossed her legs and picked at the seat cover.

 

When Junior came home, he shut the door quietly, but he had a wild and threatened look about himself. He looked at them, and raised his hands helplessly. “She's not there. The nurse said that Joker was, but Wendy wasn't there. I... I tried the old numbers, for the British Library, her private phone. None of them connected. I...”

 

Michelle could only put a comforting hand on his arm, and encourage him to sit down between her and Anita. “I'm sure it's nothing. Perhaps she changed her number. Perhaps she caught wind of what Cole's doing, just like us, and she decided to head under ground. Stay out of the picture.”

 

“Maybe,” Junior didn't sound convinced.

 

“We still have to figure out what to do about that dog,” Anita grumbled.

 

“And the others,” Michelle pointed out. “We know there's Aboshi, the villain, and Inuzuka. But there were _eight_ dog warriors. So why only one? Why this one? What did they do with the other seven?”

 

“Takeshi Kitano, if that's who he is, isn't there any more,” Junior said. “There's nobody watching us. I don't like this.”

 

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the distant noises of the night. Cars, trains, people, dogs barking. This feeling came over Michelle, and she could see it in the uneasy hunch to their shoulders, the nervous way they sat. Tense. This feeling that they should be doing something, should be somewhere else. She couldn't shake it. Sitting there felt like they were just killing time until their enemies came knocking at their door.

 

Nobody came, and none of them got a moment of restful sleep that night.


	10. How to talk about books you haven't read

The 2009 Book Expo. Yomiko had heard rumours about how very large and exciting it was, but they didn't do it justice. Just the size of the building, all those trucks and cars and people, it was incredible. They'd flown across from the West Coast, just to get to New York in time. Yomiko had hated being near so many people, having such limited carry-on weight allowance, but it had in retrospect been worth it. Now there was the Book Expo, and after that there was a long tour back across the continent before their flight home. There were stores she wanted to visit on their itinerary, but they were wiped from her mind the second that Nenene signed them in at the front desk. They were directed to the table that Nenene's Japanese publisher was to share with the other translated publishers as part of their US distributor's display. Yomiko couldn't keep still. It took sever discipline not to run to the books, embrace them.

 

“What's up with you?” Nenene asked casually. Maggie was walking quietly beside her. Did they not have any idea about the gift they'd been given by her publisher?

 

“The books,” Yomiko said plainly.

 

“Yes, there are books at the Book Expo.” Nenene said flatly.

 

“No,” Yomiko “I mean, this is an industry event. Some of these people, they _give_ them away to you.”

 

Nenene laughed. “Gotcha. Off you go, then. Maggie, you'll keep me company right?”

 

Maggie made a distressed, conflicted sound. Yomiko didn't catch her expression or what happened next. She was free to go, and she went. These weren't simply new books, or new free books. These were advanced reader's copies. Next year's new books. Books she wouldn't get a chance to read for ages otherwise.

 

She was blushing a little just at the thought of them all. She didn't know where to start, so for a little while she rushed from booth to booth, breathless. There were workshops and talks. Writers signing books, people chatting excitedly about the future of publishing and licensing, ebooks, special limited editions. Too wonderful, too much. To ground herself, Yomiko ran her fingers over the books laid out on the booth before her. Shiny covers, so shiny. Sharp corners. Smelling of new paper. Good new paper, acid-free and built to last.

 

“Please, open them, have a look. You're with an international publisher?”

 

“Japanese,” Yomiko agreed eagerly.

 

“Well I don't think our authors have signed distribution rights there. Take them home, and if your company doesn't want them, pass them on. Word of mouth never hurts!”

 

Yomiko smiled down at them. Young adult, slice of life, science fiction and fantasy. “Oh they look wonderful. Thank you!”

 

When she finally stepped away from the booth, her arms were full. She wished she'd brought her suitcase, but Nenene hadn't let her. She'd have to go back to their booth to drop them off. As she turned, enjoying the feel of the paperback spines lined up against the palms of her hands, someone clipped against her elbow. She was a paper user, she didn't stand a chance of dropping her armful, but the stranger wasn't to know that. He reached out to steady her books, and when she saw his face, all the colour fell away from the world. It was the man who looked like Donnie Nakajima, and the last time she had seen the real Donnie, she had killed him and earned her position as The Paper. Sharp and warm, that's what it felt like. The paper she'd held had been so sharp she'd cut the inside of her palms on the edges, and her hands had felt warm and wet and slick as she shivered and watched his body slump. He'd been smiling. She had screamed.

 

“Sorry!” He said, smiling in apology. “Are you okay?”

 

“Fine!” Yomiko managed to blurt out. She didn't want to ask any questions. She wanted to turn away and march straight back to Nenene and Maggie, but she felt too dizzy and empty inside to risk moving. She'd fall over, she knew it, and then he'd worry and try to help her up. Oh, how had it all gone so wrong? Coming to America had been a mistake. She hadn't ever imagined that she'd feel so hollow and broken inside, meeting him face to face. All she'd though of back in Japan was the responsibility she held towards seeing this business through to the end. She should have stayed there, where it was safe. There was nothing she was doing that Maggie and Nenene and Drake couldn't do in her place.

 

Beside her, the man who looked like Donnie was smiling in concern. “You're obviously not, you're white as a sheet. Here...”

 

She managed to step back a little, keep his skin from touching her. “No, thanks. I'm fine.”

 

“Ohhhh.” He sighed and raised his hands in a shrug. “Sorry, I forgot I had my badge on. You're not the first person to react badly, if that helps.”

 

“Um, no, it's fine. Really, I don't leave the house very often, and I'm naturally somewhat pale,” Yomiko looked at his badge for the first time. In bright colours, it said, _Donnie, Library of Congress/Google_. “It's nothing to do with who you represent. Promise.”

 

Now that he'd mentioned it though, the thought of the LoC being so publicly, shamelessly integrated with Google was chilling. The Library of Congress Yomiko had known in the past had been independent and strong, establishing and developing cataloguing standards that were used worldwide. Passionately dedicated to free information. How had this moved so fast? What else had she missed, thinking of the book tour and Donnie himself?

 

“We're not here to step on anyone's toes,” he said carefully, “just to try and get to know people. We'd rather work with the industry than against it. Anyway, never mind. But let me help you? You shouldn't carry a pile that heavy too far.”

 

Yomiko swallowed tightly. His voice was so familiar, especially when he mentioned books. She'd been too young when she'd met Donnie – she had to remind herself this wasn't _her_ Donnie – and she'd never noticed it then. She noticed it now, she'd had enough experience in life. She'd had time to look back over her own experiences. This was what somebody in Donnie's body sounded like when they were interested in someone. He was, in his own reserved and awkward way, flirting. Of all the worst emotions to ever experience, the sick feeling of wrongness and longing that boiled in her stomach at that idea was pretty bad.

 

“I'm not, my friends are right over here.”

 

He smiled. “Well then, you sure I can't help?”

 

Yomiko shook her head. She smiled politely. “All good. I'm a professional, I know what I'm doing.”

 

She walked slowly away from him, until she felt steady on her feet again. She felt numb, cold inside, apart from that sick taste of bile at the back of her throat. Shock, she knew. She made it back though, slid her pile onto the table, and flopped down beside it.

 

“Only one booth?” Nenene asked wryly, “You're letting the team down.”

 

“I... Google's here. Well, the Library of Congress and Google, holding hands.” Yomiko managed. “ _He's_ here. You know the last time someone looked like him, I...”

 

Nenene's eyes widened. She remembered of course, Yomiko could see it in her eyes. Once upon a time, a man called Ridley Wan had worn Donnie's face to trick Yomiko, and she'd been so overcome with hope and joy, she had slept with him. Yomiko's weakness had nearly killed Nenene and the kids who they'd been taking care of. She hadn't been able to live with herself and the horror of it. It wasn't a time she liked to think about.

 

“Yeah, well, you know better this time. You know it's not him.” Nenene frowned sympathetically.

 

“No, it's different. You're right. But _he_ doesn't know. I don't have any defences against that.” Yomiko looked down at her hands. There it was, out there honestly. Yomiko weak, rendered useless now. Vulnerable. Broken.

 

Maggie was the one who knew what to say. “You don't have to, we've worked around worse in the past. Nancy, Junior, my sisters, Gentlemen. Joker. You're not alone today.”

 

Yomiko closed her eyes and reached down in herself, to the deepest truth of her self. She loved paper, paper loved her, and once upon a time she had been able to make that choice. She'd been tricked and lied to, but she'd always had the strength to stand up against those that she loved and do what she felt was right in the name of literature and the published word. She just had to remind herself of that, and that the mistakes of her youth had all come from the lies the British Library told, not from her choice to champion the cause of knowledge and enlightenment.

 

“You're right. I'll be okay. I'll be fine. It was just a surprise.”

 

“Yeah,” Maggie said.

 

“A dirty, unpleasant surprise,” Nenene said. “Look, you won't have any fun here. Why don't you sit behind the table and read something. We can send Maggie out to do the rounds.”

 

“We can?!” Maggie blushed, excited.

 

“I...” Yomiko thought about it. “Yes. I'll get ready for tomorrow, I'll need to be prepared.”

 

“Hey,” Nenene poked a finger into Yomiko's side. “Don't go thinking, 'I should exploit this connection', or anything like that. Don't think you have to deal with him at all if you don't want to.”

 

“No,” Yomiko said, “I know. But I'd like to see if I can try, if I'm ready for it.”

 

“Yeah, well. Whatever. They're in the business of information control, not spycraft, anyway. Not like they'd try and kill us if we just left them to it for a while.”

 

Yomiko caught herself before she said anything about how access to literature _was_ life and death for a lot of people, literally in the case of some industries, and bit her lip. She was still shaky, and if she sat down to read, only people actually standing at the table and looking down behind it would see her. Peace and quiet, and a book. Thinking could wait until later. She lost herself in the new-glue smell and the rough paper of a cheap advance reader's copy.

 

In the hotel room, alone while the others went out to get food, Yomiko looked down at her suitcase. She'd brought some books for a purpose other than reading, and had no idea what to do with them. She'd planned to give them to Donnie, but could she? How do you approach somebody and say, hi, how are you, here are some novels that used to be owned by someone with your name. By the way, I just happened to care enough about you to give you these. Don't ask how I knew you'd be here. Enjoy!

 

But the alternative, not giving them to him at all... there was something deep inside her chest that wanted to pass them on to him. Give him back something of the Donnie she'd known. They shared genetics, if not a soul. Surely someone with the same physical brain would be able to derive pleasure from the same stimulus, even if his life experiences were entirely different.

 

She flopped back on her hotel bed and closed her eyes. “It's just a selfish dream, like how I kept Nancy from the truth, from recovery, all those years. Acting as if their lives are all about my feelings. I'm a monster.”

 

She felt better having said it aloud. She missed Nancy, and the first Nancy, and Donnie. Her skin felt cold on her arms from the air conditioning. She shivered.

 

The roar of white noise in the room was interrupted by the others getting back. They were chatting, laughing. Yomiko could smell rice and vegetables and salt sticking to them, they'd bought some more of the hilariously not-Chinese food you could get from cheap restaurants. Deep fried, half of it. More meat than flavour. People added vegetables when you asked for them, though. Maggie settled the bag of cardboard cartons on the small table and set out serviettes and disposable chopsticks. There weren't enough chairs to sit in, but there was space to stand.

 

“So I was thinking,” Nenene said between mouthfuls, “maybe the reason President Cole thinks that the project will succeed over here, is that everyone's in a salt stupor.”

 

“Sugar,” Drake said.

 

“No, Japan uses a lot of sugar in cooking. It has to be the salt.”

 

Maggie smiled, as Drake waved a hand enthusiastically. “What about all your salty foods?”

 

They'd had the argument before, they were all used to it by then. Yomiko smiled and laughed at the right places, feeling warmth spread in from her skin and out from her tummy until she felt safe and alive again. After eating, when they were sitting around and feeling tired, Yomiko brought it up.

 

“I've decided I'm going to talk to him, tomorrow. If anything I have to return some books.”

 

Nenene's eyes widened. “Return? You don't think he's actually,” she shook her head.

 

Yomiko shrugged and rubbed a finger on her cheek while she answered, hoping Nenene's common sense wouldn't put a stop to her plans. “No, I don't think he's really the man I knew. But books will be important to him, I know it. Whatever happens, I can't come all this way and let someone in his body live without the books that meant the most to the Donnie I knew.”

 

Maggie sniffled a little. “... Beautiful.”

 

“Pardon?” Yomiko hadn't quite caught everything she had said.

 

“That feeling is noble and beautiful,” Maggie repeated.

 

“Well it's certainly something,” Drake said cynically. “Do I need to be there for your security?”

 

“I wouldn't expect so, but I don't think I should be the person to make that choice, all things considered.”

 

Nenene swore under her breath and crossed her arms. “No. I am always playing the grown-up, it's not fair. One of you can take responsibility for once.”

 

“B-but,” Maggie stammered, “you're the one in charge. It's your book tour.”

 

“Well, shit,” Nenene said. “Okay. Why don't we take Drake with us to help with the stall, and then he'll be there just in case. If you try and talk to Donnie in a public area, we can keep an eye on you from a distance.”

 

“Okay,' Yomiko said. She took a deep breath. “Okay, thank you. For helping me.”

 

The sun was warm, though the haze of the city gave it a fuzzy quality. Not as bad as Tokyo's pollution did, but you could not deny that you were experiencing a clear day in a busy industrialised metropolis. The trundle of Yomiko's suitcase along the concrete footpath was reassuring, familiar. With wheels you could feel every bump and learn the shape of the ground beneath you. It was a more intimate way of grounding yourself, in an unfamiliar place. Though maybe that was just the way that you though about the world, when you relied on them to get around comfortably. Even manoeuvring past the crowds, Yomiko felt better. In control.

 

She had planned on choosing the right moment, but once she was in the hall she changed her mind. She walked straight to the Google Books Project information booth and eyed the people behind it. She didn't recognise any of them, and the only things they had on their table were pamphlets and posters, advertising for Google Books and other services, some Library of Congress publications. A sign for the question and answer panel that afternoon. Yomiko bit her lip and walked away. Perhaps he'd only been there for the first day, and she'd missed what chance she had.

 

“Hello again there,” he said. He was behind her, not touching her. She turned around quickly, to see that he had a shy smile on his face, one hand raised in a cautious greeting.

 

“Hello,” she said, reminding herself to breathe slowly and keep her head clear. “I am sorry again about yesterday, you took me by surprise.”

 

He laughed nervously, looked downwards. “Actually, I'm glad to hear that. I was hoping to talk to you.”

 

Yomiko looked around, not a quiet or empty place in sight. “Should we walk?”

 

“Lets.” He'd barely said anything, but she noticed now that she wasn't panicking, he still had a very crisp and clear British accent to his English. She was glad. The thought of his face, with an American accent, it was too strange.

 

“So, how are you finding the-” she started uncertainly, at the same time that he said,

 

“I'm very sorry about the other day. I'm assuming you knew me once.”

 

Yomiko felt panic settling back in. She tried not to stare at him or trip over her own feet.

 

“Donna told me a lot more than anyone else has. She told me to contact you, but the way you reacted I can only assume you knew me, er, before.”

 

“Before Gentlemen,” Yomiko said tentatively.

 

“Was it? I honestly have no recollection of things. I do know that I am unique amongst the synthetic beings Dokusensha called the I-jin, in that I am a normal human being remade. I even still have my original name. I think the rest of us are simply clones made from a mix of DNA.”

 

“I... yes. I see. But you don't retain any memories at all?”

 

He smiled sadly. “If I did, from the way you looked at me, I'd remember you, wouldn't I?”

 

“Maybe not,” Yomiko said. She was walking on eggshells, having this conversation. “So, N... Donna told you to contact me? Did she want you to pass anything on?”

 

“No, of course not. I'm not sure why, actually. I think she simply wanted me to be acquainted with everyone else. You have to admit, a crowded place like this, they wouldn't expect a clandestine meeting.”

 

“Ah, well.” Yomiko didn't feel up to all the explanations that would be needed to bring up how very suspicious it looked, or how easy it would be for Cole's people to associate Yomiko's passport with Nenene's, and then Nenene with the Expo and through that... Ah, it was too much. “What has she told you about me? We all assumed you were Cole's man, given our experiences with Dokusensha and the British Library. It's strange to imagine her telling you anything at all.”

 

Donnie scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, all right. Ah, let's see. Hardly anything, but that you were able to save a lot of us from the organisations that manipulated us. That you keep a spare fantasy trilogy in your inner coat pockets, in case you run out of reading material on the train. That you were there, fighting the British Library, during the 451 incident. Just, you've both been there. It's amazing! ”

 

He was gushing, eager, infatuated. He was so very young and naïve, his eyes shone with it. She had to kill it, and she knew she could do it. For the books. It wouldn't do to encourage him, it had only led to suffering and pain in the past.

 

“Did she tell you how I became involved?”

 

“Not exactly,” he admitted.

 

“Well,” Yomiko modulated her voice, kept it low so as not to attract attention. “Try not to look too surprised, all right?”

 

He laughed, nodded “Whatever you say.”

 

“I was acting as an agent for the British Library,” she said. “The 451 incident was punishment for me, for refusing to follow orders and acting against my superiors. It is a much longer story, but it involves Donna a lot. I can't reveal secrets that aren't mine to keep. It doesn't matter. I set the British Library on fire, and they set my home on fire as revenge of sorts, and to force my hand. It had less to do with the other events than historians like to pretend.”

 

His eyes held wariness and a little less awe in them. He walked slower beside her, did not meet her eyes.

 

“There is more. You know that you were preserved because you were at the point of death. Somebody damaged the original Donnie Nakajima's body. She ripped your arms from your body, she sliced open your arteries. She severed your spinal cord and disfigured your face. She did it in order to qualify for a position within the British Library. There can only ever be one Agent The Paper, you see.”

 

“You... why...?” He looked at her with barely controlled horror.

 

“I didn't mean to tell you, but if Nancy wants you to work with us, you have a right to know. It is not fair to exploit your ignorance just because you could be useful to us. I'm so sorry.”

 

They stood still in the crowds for a while. This time, it was Donnie who was struck still in shock, and Yomiko wished she was neither so old nor so pragmatic as she was. Eventually he reached out to gently touch her arm, and they kept going. They looked at some stalls quietly and politely before he spoke again.

 

“Thank you for telling me. I was getting a bit of a crush on you, that's why it's so devastating. It's hard to go from light and fluffy emotions to abject terror. Did we ever...”

 

“So,” Yomiko said, changing the topic, “you mentioned how I helped some of the I-jin. Do you want your own freedom at the end of this?”

 

Donnie cocked his head thoughtfully. That one curl of hair stuck out the side like always. “Not quite. I don't think I'll get free in that sense, whether I spend the rest of my days tied to Google and the project or living peacefully by myself. But this idea that one corporation or country has the right to assert monopolistic control over information access, and that it's even being sold up as some kind of universal free access to human knowledge... it makes me sick. It makes me furious.”

 

Yomiko nodded. So he was still Donnie where it counted most then, deep down. “It's this logical fallacy,” she agreed, “that absolute control over information will lead to absolute power, when the power of information is only absolute when it is freely shared by all humanity.”

 

“Exactly! Oh, my dear murderer, you cannot imagine how nice it is to have somebody to talk to like this. I think Donna understands, but she doesn't see the injustice in it all.”

 

“Donna is more used to leveraging power against people, to her it's a concept she can't have full faith in. Take for example, say everything is free and digitally distributed. What about the people with no computer access, or limited access? What about the people who learn how to keep better secrets, when most information is openly shared? She sees the inequalities and how to use them. That's what she believes in. It's why she's so good at what she does.”

 

Donnie looked very interested. “You know her very well?”

 

“As well as anybody can, but that's only because I don't forget things.”

 

Donnie laughed. “I've got a mind like a sieve,” he joked. But then he immediately sobered. “No, don't tell me. I literally did.”

 

“Of course not,” Yomiko said. “Obviously they wouldn't have been able to reconstruct you so well if you didn't have a complete brain.”

 

He sighed, and in the silence that followed, Yomiko felt guilt and fear and that heavy sick panic rising inside again. She swallowed against it, and tightened her hand around the handle of her suitcase.

 

“In any case, I didn't know you were going to approach me for this. It's a bit unexpected. What I really wanted to do today was give you some books. They were all yours, back when... back then.”

 

He leaned to look at her suitcase. “Really? Wow.”

 

She crouched down beside it. “Actually, do you have a bag? There are a few.”

 

He winked at her. “I can still handle paper, you know.”

 

“Oh.” her heart fluttered in her chest. “Silly me, did not think of that. Here we go, then.”

 

She pulled them out without looking at them, piling them in his waiting arms. “So you know my face now. I'm with three others, but it's better you don't know them all on sight, I think. I can get in contact with you?”

 

He surreptitiously used his powers to coax a business card out of his shirt pocket and into her fingers. She put it in her vest pocket without looking at it. “Good. Well, then.”

 

Four more books and she was done. “It's not as many of yours as I have at home, but I thought a gesture was better than nothing. I can send the rest on to you, one day.”

 

“I'd like that,” he said, and neither of them said, _if we survive this_.

 

“I'm glad you don't hate me, for killing you,” she said. Donnie hadn't hated her back then, but he'd understood why at the time. This version of Donnie had no context, and it had to be terrifying, being told to trust a person that you knew had murdered you and put you in a powerless situation.

 

Donnie had opened the front cover of the book on top of the stack. “But this one, it's too recent.” It was a copy of _Un Lun Dun._ China Mieville.

 

“Oh, yes, well. We're both half British, and before you died, you lived in London once. You should enjoy it. Although now you can't remember that, can you? Don't feel you have to read it. I forgot you wouldn't remember. If you do, I hope you like it anyway.”

 

Yomiko turned to go, when he said “Wait!”

 

She knew better, but she waited anyway.

 

“Were we, this is hard to ask. You didn't just inherit my books with the position. Did we know each other outside of that murder incident?”

 

She couldn't lie to him. “Yes.”

 

He was quiet, his thoughts turned inwards. “I'm glad, then. I always think, it must be nicer to die at the hands of somebody you know and care for, than those of a complete stranger.”

 

“Of course _you_ would think that,” she said. She smiled sheepishly. “You're still yourself, even if everything else has changed. Although...”

 

“Although?”

 

“You're so _young_ now. You used to be so much older than me, and now I think I'm ahead of you by at least ten years.”

 

He looked startled. It was probably the last thing on his mind.

 

“I'll get in touch,” she promised, “to see if you like the book. Tell Donna that everyone is thinking of her, we miss her.”

 

The second time, Yomiko managed to walk away without looking back. Donnie let her go. It hurt to leave, but it was wrong to stay. She could feel the weight of all that past so heavy on her own shoulders, and knew it must be heavier for someone who could not recall any of it. Who had not been there for a good eighty percent of it. What could you make, of someone like that, who was and was not themselves? She had no idea. Had it been wrong to keep some things from him, and present him with others? Perhaps trying to avoid the mistakes of the past would simply recreate them. Beautiful in literature, depressing in real life. Still, her heart felt lighter. She'd given his books back. His most important and heartfelt feelings. The loves of the original Donnie's life. What a gift, to be able to give that to someone. He was working with Nancy, he was on their side from the sounds of it. It was over, and she'd never have to have that conversation again. She felt floaty and free when she sat down at the booth between Nenene and Drake.

 

“Hey, you okay?” Nenene asked, looking at her with worried eyes.

 

“Yes, fine.” Yomiko said, and she was. “Not at all like that other time. Maybe it's because I've had my revenge, it's all come out of me. Or it could be that I can let go of the people I love now.”

 

“You're insane,” Nenene said, “but I understand what you mean. Still. You've forgotten the most important part. You've got to work for me, so there's no chance of haring off on some wild boy-chase this time.”

 

“Eheheh.” Yomiko ducked her head, blushing. “Right. Work.”

 

“Yeah, that's right. Work.” Nenene stabbed her finger down onto a pile of pamphlets. “The boring thing that pays our airline and hotel bills. Get to it!”


	11. The mysterious flame of Queen Loana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's taking a while to get another full chapter out, so here's a short interlude focusing on Donnie after the Book Expo. I would recommend The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana to anyone who looks back at their lives in connection with the books that they read. To my regular readers and subscribers, thanks for hanging in there patiently for so long.

The phone rang as Donnie was just getting into the hotel room. Not his mobile. No display on the old hotel phones. He had one of those moments, where you pause and wonder if it's really for you. If it's the hotel staff, or your boss, and you shouldn't pick up anyway.

 

He scowled at it, but he picked it up, anyway.

 

"How'd it go?"

 

Donna Moss. Donnie didn't know her real name, but she'd been there when he'd needed her, and together they were going to stand in the way of anybody who tried to exert monopolistic control over information. She knew more about him, than he did himself. After the conversation he'd had with Ms. Readman at the Book Expo, he was happy with that. What he didn't know couldn't hurt him.

 

"I don't know," he said honestly. "Odd. Can we even talk on this line?"

 

"As if I'd call you, if we couldn't."

 

"Don't be evasive, yes or no."

 

He pulled his shoes and socks off, cradling the handset against his shoulder. Workplace safety no-no. Horrible things were happening to Donnie's brain. He was working more often than he was reading. Or, he was talking to Donna.

 

"Don't be such a baby. Yes, all right? It's a secure line. As secure as anything, these days. Nobody we care about is going to hear us."

 

"Right," he said. He left it at that.

 

"Don't want to talk?" She sounded concerned. Not her usual flirty and energetic self.

 

"I'm just tired. I was planning on reading when I got back, tonight. She returned... some of my books. With interest."

 

Donna sighed. "Odd, then."

 

"You're telling me," he agreed. "What was it like, when you..."

 

"I had severe brain damage, PTSD, and was deemed unable to care for my own child. Don't you dare compare."

 

"I wasn't! I just, I wanted to know. What it was like for you. With her... how she remembers an entirely different person."

 

"I am an entirely different person. A clone, yes. But even clones have feelings. Nature and nurture. I don't think she ever confused me with Ms. Makuhari"

 

"Who?"

 

"That was the assumed name that my goody two-shoes doppleganger worked under. The real Makuhari died in suspicious circumstances."

 

"I... see." Donnie stuck his hand into one of the bags he had used to carry the books back to the hotel. He had to touch one, feel it on his skin. He lay back on the bed, and laid it flat on his stomach, over his shirt. Pressed the palm of his hand down on the cover.

 

"But, I knew. Once she told me about my past, before the incident. I knew that she hadn't saved me because it was me, or even just for the sake of helping a suffering stranger. She saved me because she felt guilty over somebody else. She saved me to get revenge, on them, for-"

 

Donna cut herself off. Donnie scoffed. They both knew the truth. "To get revenge on Joseph Carpenter, for what he did to her."

 

"To you," Donna said. This was a long-running argument between them.

 

"Mr. Carpenter didn't do anything to me that I didn't justify and knowingly risk through the actions I took."

 

"You can't know that!"

 

Donnie nodded, glad Donna couldn't see the expression on his face. "And neither can you."

 

There was a silence between them, and the crackling fuzz of the old telephone line.

 

"We've both been held accountable for the choices we made. We paid the price. And now it's just..."

 

"Odd," Donnie supplied.

 

"Odd," Donna agreed. "It's like I can't breathe without her, can't imagine a life that isn't defined by her, and I'll never be myself in her eyes, because she'll always be looking for somebody else."

 

Donnie lowered his gaze, and stared a little cross-eyed at the book on his abdomen. Someone in his body, using his brain, had met a young girl, and allowed her to fall in love with him - irresponsible, inappropriate! He had betrayed the British Library, and forced Joseph Carpenter's hand. He was caught, surrendered. He had followed Joseph Carpenter's plan, and threatened the girl. Taunted her. Forced her to protect herself.

 

"I have his scars," that was the only way Donnie could really describe that feeling. His throat burned, and he wanted to throw the book across the room. He stroked its spine, switched the phone over to his other ear.

 

"I didn't have anything to remember myself by," Donna said quietly at the other end of the line. "My lover was dead, my child was abducted, and nobody in the world remembered me. Just her. The woman that lived in the other copy of my body. I was her spare. I was nobody."

 

The silence between them was heavier, but Donnie felt a solidarity with Donna that he had never known before.

 

"You took them down. President Cole. Joseph Carpenter. Dokusensha, The British Library. You destroyed them all."

 

"I took my son back." She said. "I miss him. He barely knows me. What we did to them wasn't enough."

 

Their words ran together, there was too much emotion, and too little certainty between them. They talked over each other. Donnie couldn't have said who said what, if he tried. He was too caught up in it all.

 

"We can do it again. I'm here. Google is too busy in its power games with the Library of Congress."

 

"They aren't expecting us. Ada still thinks we're with her."

 

"It will never be enough."

 

"When it's over, we'll be nothing." Donna let out a long, slow breath. He could hear her trying to calm down.

 

"We'll be us," he said. "That's the thing about cloning. Looooots of copies!"

 

"Clones are still unique people. You're a moron," she said, fondly.

 

"Guilty as charged, but we both already knew that."

 

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Go to sleep, you'll have an early start tomorrow."

 

"Yeah, all right." As if she hadn't been the one who called in the first place. "Did you call to check up on me, or to make yourself feel better?"

 

"No idea. Don't care. I'm going to go find myself a stiff drink." She hung up, and he was left alone on a hotel bed, with silence and piles of books.

 

He generally read to relax, to take his mind off of work. For as long as he could remember, it had been his safe-haven. Paper was home, it was safe and welcoming. The dry, sharp taste of bookbinder's glue and old paper at the back of his throat. The light weight of an individual page, barely a gram, barely a touch against your skin. The entire double-sided measure in ink of a person's mind.

 

He'd been interested, curious. What had he read, once, all that time ago? What were the parts of himself that he had forgotten? In the taxi ride from the convention centre, he had been nervous and impatient. He'd nearly ignored the phone ringing. But now that he had time, he couldn't face the thought of opening a cover, let alone skimming one.

 

He set the book - he still hadn't looked to see what it was - aside. Drank a glass of water, brushed his teeth. Took a shower. He walked past the bedside table, and picked up the book, the keys to the room. Slipped them inside his pocket.

 

The city was always busy, always crowded. Obnoxious and noisy, and you could have been in London or Paris or Tokyo, and it would have felt the same. Nothing was distinct. Nothing had edges. The bricks were old and soft, corners worn off. He had visited all of those places. He had seen photographs of the proof of it. Mission reports. Documentation. His signature. Facsimiles.

 

Yomiko was old. An older woman. In his patchy memories, of which there weren't many, he'd never really liked older women. They'd seen too much of the world. They could see right through his reserved insecurities, right to the scared little boy inside. They usually smirked and moved on. Her hair was still as messy and unattended as it had been when she was young. He'd seen the photographs of her, as a girl. Enthusiastic, distracted, bright-eyed. Since then, she had grieved, and gotten on with her life and her work. She had cleaned up his messes for him. She remembered him, where he couldn't remember her.

 

It was like she owned his past. As if he had less of a right to himself, to feeling whole inside, than she did. As if there was this boundary that he could not cross, and it sat inside his pocket.

 

He ran his thumb over the edges, felt the ruffle of pages beneath it. Rolled his shoulders inwards, and turned towards a street cafe. He couldn't trust himself to be alone, it was too private. If he was just one person, reading in a cafe, that was anonymous. It was public. It was, somehow, a respectable compromise.

 

The true magic that comes from a book is that no matter how many people surround you, no matter how many people have written it, no matter how many characters are in it, when you are reading it you are truly alone. Private. You are by yourself, and the only things in your head are your own thoughts turning words into ideas into a story. Nobody else's voice. There's this clean, safe divide between all of your insecurities and all of the strange ways that people have conversations in the real world. It is this marvellous way of being alone and being yourself in comfort. No second guessing. The story takes you away, and there you are. Blessed silence.

 

Donnie hadn't taken the time to himself to read, not properly. Perhaps not since he had woken up in Washington. There had always been work to do. He hadn't been able to shake that fear, really. Could reading a novel imprint a personality into your mind? Touching one? There were no records, but a lot of documentation of the Gentelmen Project had been destroyed. The special people, the I-jin, they had been groomed to be perfect from an early age. First, with Donnie and his friend Ridley, routine 'scholarships' and programming. The arena. Then, with the clones, genetic manipulation and eugenics. Attempts to make fiction cross over into reality. The British Library had certainly tried to transfer a human soul into a book, and then back from there into a body.

 

No, that wasn't quite it. Not a soul. Just an imprint, a pattern. A scan of an old man's brain, with state-of-the-art but very basic technology. A measurement of electrical impulses and synapses. The Gentlemen Books had been a codified version of a state of being, a snapshot of a human mind, repeated a few times and recorded. The attempt to imprint Gentlemen's mind into Anita King had merely been an attempt to impose Gentlemen's brain activity pattern over her own. Even with an extra dump of I-jin memories - brainwashed reprogramming, a psychological rather than a technological marvel - if they had succeeded, they surely would have (should have) been left with Anita King, plus some neuroses.

 

Donnie knew there was no actual way for a book to force its way into his head, and turn him into somebody else. But it sure was ruining his ability to concentrate and lose himself in the story. Sighing, he leaned on his left elbow, pressed the fingers of his right hand up into his hair, and tried to focus.

 

It was an _Everyman_ , pocket-sized reprints of classics. Battered and faded, with – disgustingly enough – a small insect pressed between the pages of the introduction. Donnie frowned. What kind of bibliophile put a potentially infected book into a suitcase full of them? A complete and utter ditz. Someone more infatuated with the words on the page, than anything else, maybe. Or someone who loved everything that came with books?

 

It was _The Old Curiosity Shop_ , which seemed like a really depressing choice, for a gift to someone else. Dickens, without the happy ending. It was a book that showed the cruel and many ways that adults could change children's lives, and...

 

Donnie sighed, even heavier. He flipped the cover shut, and pulled the cafe menu towards himself. He had read the book, several times, as a young man. Out of training, working in the British Library, he had resolved to read all of the great British writers. _The Old Curiosity Shop_ had given him real food for thought at the time. It was the first time that he had seen himself as a victim, instead of a test subject or a survivor. Reading about Nell's tragedy, it had become very clear. The men and women who had shaped Donnie's life weren't just his personal enemies. It became more complex than hatred and survival.

 

The British Library and the British government hadn't simply experimented on children, to try and create more powerful agents, and replacement shells for Gentlemen's intelligence. They had placed their own very shortsighed and personal fears, their desire for power, above any other authority in the world. Like Nell's grandfather, they would burn out. Die, and leave a trail of bodies and outstanding debts in their wake.

 

Donnie hadn't enjoyed the book, but there had been Kit. A young boy who had tried with everything in his power to protect and save his friend. To take her away from the toxic situation she was in. He remembered it in feelings, more than in concepts. This hope, that things could be different. That there were people in a world outside of Donnie and Ridley's suffering. That a good amount of what was imprisoning Donnie, tying him to the British Library, was imaginary. Something he could change, if he wanted to.

 

He felt sick. His hands were clammy, and he kept his eyes downcast as he ordered hot tea and some raisin toast. He was weightless, falling, and everything was too personal. Surely someone would see him, with that book, his shaking hands, and see right through him.

 

If he had thought that reading was going to help, at all, he'd surely been wrong. But it was better, that the waiter made light conversation and lingered – people trying to earn their tips was a bafflingly invasive practice – and that Donnie had a social contract to fulfil. He was sitting at a cafe, so he had to speak to someone, ask for something. Eat and drink, slowly but not too slow. Calculate the tip. Pay.

 

By the time he was ready to leave, he felt steadier. He frowned at the book, began to walk away. He reached the curb of the pavement before he felt it, a tug in his gut. The knowledge that there were all kinds of reasons that Yomiko may have given him that book, and that there was a message from that version of himself before the death and the brain damage, that he shouldn't be allowed to forget.

 

He ran back, and found the waiter standing, smiling, holding the book out. “Thought you'd be back for this,” he said. He had short, frizzing hair and an easy grin. “Here ya go.”

 

Donnie smiled politely, and nodded in thanks, and was thumbing the cover open one-handed before it had even left the waiter's hands. He walked, and read, and let the book lead him back to his hotel room, and all of the other things about himself that he needed to know.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes – since this is set immediately following the TV series, Diana Wynne Jones is not dead. In every story I write that is set in our universe, before that sad day, I smile because it's a world that still has DWJ in it. I began writing this in 2009, long before the 2011 closures of Angus and Robertson and Borders bookstores in Australia and worldwide. My thanks to Beatrice for proofreading these first sections for me.
> 
> Disclaimer: There are things about the Google Books project that I appreciate, things about the Google Books Settlement that I dislike. This is a work of fiction, and it is not portraying my personal feelings on the matter. I also do not think that The British Library ever had a secret agent department... though if they do have one, I am currently unemployed and can be recruited.


End file.
